This piece comes from Jodi Hogan, facilitator of my ADHD Parent Coach Academy

Back-to-school is often described as a time for fresh starts, new routines, and new opportunities. And while there can be so much excitement, parents of kids with ADHD also know that the transition back to school can bring some familiar challenges.

As the school year begins, the demands on your child’s executive function increase, too. Suddenly, there are earlier mornings, more transitions, more things to remember, homework to manage, and more reminders - all of which can leave everyone feeling frustrated.

If you have ever thought, “Why does everything feel harder once school starts?” - you are not alone.

These are the kinds of moments parents bring to our Calm & Connected community - and they’re more common than you might think.

The truth is, children with ADHD often do best with support, structure, and connection. Back to school is an opportunity to reset routines, strengthen your relationship, and help your child build confidence and independence - without feeling like you need to manage every step.

Here are a few simple shifts that can help.

Start With Connection

One of the most powerful shifts we can make as parents is remembering: connection comes before correction.

Children with ADHD often hear a lot of feedback throughout their day:

• “Remember what you’re doing.”

• “Pay attention.”

• “Hurry up.”

• “Listen.”

• “Why did you do that?”

Even when these reminders come from a place of love, kids can begin to feel like they’re always being corrected. And parents can feel like they spend their days reminding, repeating, and redirecting.

Back to school gives us a chance to change that rhythm.

Look for moments when your child feels successful, capable, and seen. Ask about something they enjoyed that day. Show curiosity about their interests. Make time together where the goal isn’t homework, fixing, teaching, or correcting - it’s simply to connect.

When kids feel connected, they’re more willing to accept support and guidance.

Create Predictable Structure

Back to school brings more structure, but for kids with ADHD, having a routine isn’t always the same as being able to manage it independently. A few predictable routines at home can make busy school days feel more manageable.

Structure doesn’t have to mean a rigid schedule. Focus on a few consistent anchors:

• A predictable morning routine

• A consistent after-school routine

• A designated spot for backpacks and school supplies

• Clear expectations around homework and screens

• A consistent bedtime routine

Whenever possible, make the routine visible with a checklist, calendar, or other visual reminder.

These simple systems take some of the guesswork out of the day - and can mean less reminding from you and more independence for your child.

Make Expectations Clear Before Everyone Is Frustrated

Children with ADHD are often not intentionally ignoring expectations - they may struggle with remembering, shifting gears, estimating time, or managing impulses.

That’s why setting expectations ahead of time can make such a difference.

Talk together about:

• Screen time limits

• Responsibilities

• Plans for the day

• What needs to happen before preferred activities

• How transitions will work

When children know what to expect, they are better prepared to meet those expectations.

Offer Choices to Build Cooperation

One of the biggest goals we have as parents is helping our children develop independence. Offering choices is a simple way to give your child practice with decision-making while reducing power struggles.

Instead of: “Clean your room.”

Try: “Would you rather start with your clothes or your books?”

Instead of: “Turn off the screen now.”

Try: “You have five more minutes. Would you like to turn it off yourself, or would you like me to remind you?”

Small choices communicate that you trust them, that they have some control, and that you’re working together.

Remember the Bigger Picture

The school year will not always go smoothly.

There will be rushed mornings, forgotten assignments, routines that fall apart, and moments when your child struggles. There will be days when you wonder if you’re making any progress at all.

Those moments don’t erase the growth that’s happening.

The goal isn’t a perfect school year. It’s more connection, more understanding, and more opportunities for your child to feel capable and successful.

Small changes in how we communicate, respond, and support our children can create meaningful shifts.

Your child may not remember whether every morning went smoothly, every assignment was handed in, or every expectation was met.

But they will remember how they felt with you.

And that connection is where lasting change begins.

If you want support putting these ideas into practice, Calm & Connected - my 7-session live workshop series - starts September 29th.

Learn More: Calm and Connected: Parenting Kids & Teens with ADHD/Executive Function Challenges

What’s one small routine that’s made a real difference for your family this time of year?

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The article shares how a mother in Arkansas got a call from her son’s kindergarten. He’d grabbed a classmate’s jacket in the cafeteria and twisted it - the school thought he might have been trying to choke her. Given his history, the school gave her two options: a three day suspension, or a paddling from the administrator, right there, that day. She couldn’t afford three days off work. So she chose the paddling, and said she felt instant regret the moment it happened.

To me, both of those options go against everything I teach parents and educators. Neither one would do anything to decrease the odds that a similar incident happens again, and both would likely set this child up for more of the same down the road. I’ll get to what I think would have actually helped in a moment. But first, let’s look at what’s going on in schools across the country right now.

According to the article, the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection, or CRDC, shows almost 32,000 reported instances of corporal punishment used on K-12 students in the 2021-’22 school year.

The piece reports that corporal punishment is still legal in public schools in fifteen states. Thirty states and Washington, D.C. have banned it outright. The most recent federal data shows that corporal punishment is concentrated overwhelmingly in a handful of Southern states. Boys are disciplined this way more than girls, and Black and Native American boys experience it at disproportionately high rates relative to their enrollment. NPR also cites a 2021 study finding that counties with a heavier history of lynching are more likely to use corporal punishment on students today - especially on Black students. This is current policy, with a documented history.

And notably, all of this data is about public schools. Private schools are exempt from nearly every state ban on the books - corporal punishment is legal in private schools in all but two or three states, even in states that outlawed it for public schools decades ago. And private schools aren’t required to report anything to the federal government - so there’s no way of knowing what’s going on outside the public school system.

I say this not to make the case against private schools, but because this is exactly why oversight matters. The regulation mandated by public schools allows us to know what’s happening to kids, including the ones with the least power to say something - because of economics, a learning difference, or a mental health need - no matter what kind of school they’re in.

So, where this still happens, what is a paddling actually supposed to teach?

The answer schools give is usually some version of self-control. Respect. The idea that pain now prevents the behavior later.

But is that really what a child learns? Let me share an example I often use in my parenting work - one that I think shows the unintended consequences of how adults respond to children’s challenging behavior more clearly.

Imagine you’re in a department store with your child, and they decide it’s a good time to play hide and seek under a clothing rack. After frantically searching for what feels like an hour, you finally spot them wiggling under the rack and pull them out. You’re angry and frustrated, but underneath that, you’re probably flooded with relief - the fear that your child was lost, or worse, was real. So you yell at them right there, on the spot. You tell them they must never do that again, figuring that a public reprimand will make sure they remember never to play that game again.

In that moment, though, your child is probably feeling humiliated and scared. They’re focused on their own fear, or on the anger of the adult they trust most - not on what they did wrong. They may not even be processing the moment in a way they’ll remember later.

Instead of that response, I tell parents this: without calm, there’s no real learning. Whatever big feelings you’re having in that moment, and you’re entitled to them, handling it right then usually isn’t productive for either of you. I suggest telling your child, calmly, that what they did was wrong, and that you’ll talk about it later - privately, quietly. Then, when you do, you can talk about what worried you, and try to understand why your child did what they did.

Without calm, there’s no real learning.

This is the belief I build almost everything I teach around - the one Ross Greene and others named years ago: kids do well if they can. When they can’t, it’s usually because they’re missing the skill, the awareness, or the problem-solving ability to behave the way we want, not because they’re choosing not to. What they need, in order to learn and grow, is knowledgeable adults around them, willing to teach them the skills and insights they don’t have yet. Punishment, especially when it’s physically or emotionally painful, does none of that.

Kids do well if they can.

Further into the piece, the mother describes what her son’s mornings looked like before any of this happened - separation anxiety, meltdowns, a daily struggle just to get through drop-off. Her words were that he was already in fight or flight. This helps explain what happened in that cafeteria - his nervous system never had the calm it needed to learn anything in the first place.

So corporal punishment isn’t just harsh. It’s ineffective. It escalates a nervous system that’s already too activated to learn, using the one tool guaranteed to push it further from calm instead of closer to it.

And it isn’t only paddles that create such harm. Yelling, sarcasm, ultimatums, the raised voice that matches a child’s volume instead of settling under it - these all send some version of the same message. When an adult meets dysregulation with dysregulation, we’re modeling exactly what we’re trying to unteach. Kids don’t learn to self-regulate by watching an adult fail to. First, we must model our own regulation to help them co-regulate.

This is where the school-to-prison pipeline troubles me so much. Children with disabilities are suspended or expelled at more than four times the rate of children without - 5.4 percent compared to 1.2 percent. Kids flagged for ADHD or behavior concerns show up in that number disproportionately. A student who has been suspended even once is more than twice as likely to end up incarcerated later on. This happens again and again, when a school’s only two options are exclusion and pain, with nothing in between that actually teaches the missing skill.

I wrote about this pipeline a few months ago - about a county jail in Boulder, Colorado that has quietly become its community’s largest mental health facility, and about how the same brain can end up building a company or sitting in a cell, depending almost entirely on whether anyone caught the signs early enough. Corporal punishment is an earlier, blunter version of that same failure.

None of this means there should be no structure, no limits, no accountability. Kids need all three. The mother in the NPR piece put it better than I could: she still wants her son held accountable, just in a way that’s safe for him and for everyone else. Structure without regulation is just control, and control doesn’t build a single skill. It just waits for the next time a child can’t yet do what he doesn’t yet know how to do.

This is the whole premise behind why I believe coaching and teaching parents and teachers the skills they need to hold onto under pressure is so vital: calm isn’t the reward for good behavior. It’s the precondition for teaching any behavior at all.

Calm isn’t the reward for good behavior. It’s the precondition for teaching any behavior at all.

The piece closes with an update. That boy is thirteen now. He loves to dance. He still struggles sometimes with his emotions, but these days, when something happens at school, he comes home and tells his mother right away, before she even has to ask. She says he’s learned to regulate himself better than he ever did under the threat of a paddle. Nobody had to hurt him to get there. Somebody just had to teach him. I want every school with a paddle still sitting in a supply closet to read that.

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You probably know this as “Grandma’s Rule”. The idea is simple. Pair something less desirable with something more desirable, and the less desirable thing is more likely to get done.

Psychologists call this the Premack Principle.

“First homework, then screen time.”

“Eat your dinner, then you can have dessert.”

“Finish your work, then you can go outside.”

For a lot of kids, this works well. In my practice, I refer to some kids as “clay”. You can gently mold them — they don’t often push back. These kids can often hold the reward in mind – they can sense time passing. They can picture the screen time, the dessert, the freedom, and let that image of what is next motivate them through the harder part.

But if you’re raising, teaching, or working with a kid who has ADHD or executive function challenges, you’ve probably noticed that this type of motivation doesn’t always work. Even though you use logic, explain what they get to do afterward, maybe even tell them it will be easier if they just start, the child still can’t get started. Or they start, then stall out halfway through, no closer to done than when they began.

It’s tempting to read that as defiance, or as a child who just isn’t motivated by the reward. But usually, that’s not the case.

These are the kids I refer to as Cactus kids, you can’t push them or prod them - they may be prickly on the outside - but that doesn’t mean they aren’t beautiful when they bloom.

Won’t and can’t are not the same thing

There’s a real difference between a child who won’t do something and a child who can’t. It rarely has to do with defiance.

Sometimes a child is capable of doing the task, but they just aren’t motivated to start. This is what I call a “won’t.” Not defiance, just something else occupying their thoughts in the moment. And for people with ADHD, time is often “now” and “not now.” They don’t feel the need to start until “the fire is at the door.” The Premack Principle - setting the expectation that first this, then that can happen - can genuinely help here, because the child is guided in what they need to do and supported in seeing what will be next.

But sometimes what looks like resistance is actually an ability problem. In that moment, the child’s attention and self-control are not where they need to be. They’re not choosing to ignore the reward. They can’t access the part of their brain that would let them picture it, want it, and use it to get moving. That’s a “can’t” – in that moment. No matter how appealing you make the payoff, if their brain doesn’t have what it needs in the moment, picturing the future isn’t going to help get them through.

This is where a lot of well-meaning parents and educators get stuck. They don’t recognize that the problem is not motivation, it’s their child’s ability in the moment. So, they are using the wrong strategy.

Two different problems need two different fixes

If a child won’t, motivation-based strategies still have a place. Help them picture what they’re working toward. Ask how they’ll feel once they are done. Acknowledge that while the task feels hard right now, there is still a specific and clear expectation to be met.

If a child can’t, then the support has to happen before the moment, not during it, through planning and problem-solving in advance. That may involve reducing the number of decisions and steps involved, building in external cues like checklists, timers, or visual schedules instead of relying on verbal reminders, and being physically present and working alongside the child rather than directing from across the room. Having a compassionate conversation helps here; however, it might need to wait until the child is calm enough to “hear” and process what you’re asking of them.

The starting question isn’t “how do I motivate this child.” It’s “which problem am I actually solving for right now.”

Why this distinction matters more than the strategy itself

Once you can tell the difference between won’t and can’t, a lot of parenting and teaching moments stop feeling like a battle of wills. They start looking like what they actually are: a mismatch between what a child’s brain can do in that moment and what’s being asked of them.

This changes what you say, what you expect, and how much frustration you’re experiencing about a behavior that was never about defiance in the first place.

If these struggles sound familiar, they are the kind of issues we work through together in our Calm and Connected parent workshop series, as well as in one-on-one coaching, where our coaches look at your specific child, your specific mornings, and figure out together what’s really going on.

So the next time a strategy that should work doesn’t, it might be worth asking: is this a won’t problem, or a can’t problem?

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The article, published in The Washington Post, describes a study out of JAMA Psychiatry that analyzed over 1,150 brain scans of children and adolescents. Researchers found three distinct subtypes of ADHD in the imaging: predominantly inattentive, predominantly hyperactive/impulsive, and a third, more severe presentation marked by emotional dysregulation. Kids in that third group showed far more extensive changes across the brain than the other two, nearly double the number of affected regions. This wasn’t just “more” ADHD. It looked like something categorically different.

If you’ve ever parented, taught, or coached a child who goes from calm to a full meltdown in what feels like seconds, screaming, throwing things, and collapsing entirely, none of this will surprise you. You already know these kids exist. What’s new is that brain imaging is starting to catch up to what you’ve been observing all along.

This isn’t actually new territory for those of us who’ve spent years in this field. As far back as 2010, Dr. Russell Barkley, a clinical psychologist and leading researcher in the field, argued that emotional dysregulation isn’t a side effect of ADHD; it’s part of the core condition itself. He made the case that impulsive, poorly regulated emotion belongs alongside inattention and hyperactivity as a defining feature of the disorder, even though it’s left out of the official diagnostic criteria. He went so far as to suggest ADHD could just as accurately be called DESR, Deficits in Emotional Self-Regulation, because for so many kids and adults, the emotional piece isn’t extra. It’s central.

In fact, if you look closely at the criteria for Oppositional Defiant Disorder, most of it describes emotional reactivity, not defiance. A child who explodes, refuses, or melts down isn’t necessarily choosing to be oppositional. More often, what looks like ODD is the visible expression of the same underlying dysregulation that’s already part of ADHD. We may be handing some kids a second diagnosis for what is really one brain struggling to regulate itself.

Something I remind parents and educators (and family and friends😊) is that Kids do well if they can, not if they want to. (Adults too, by the way). If a child isn’t managing his emotions, the question isn’t why he won’t. It’s what skill is missing, what problem do they need help solving?

This is exactly why standard behavior charts and reward systems can misfire so badly with these kids. I wrote about this in more depth in Why the Reward Chart Isn’t Working, but the short version is this: rewards work well when a skill is already within a child’s reach and just needs a nudge into habit. They break down when the goal is actually to teach a skill that isn’t there yet, managing frustration, shifting attention, and tolerating a hard moment. The article quotes Dr. Melissa DelBello, a psychiatry professor at the University of Cincinnati, who said plainly that children with this more severe presentation are “not as sensitive to rewards.” That tracks with what many of us have seen for years. But I’d push it further. It’s not just that rewards don’t work as well. They can actively backfire.

When you offer a reward to a child who doesn’t yet have the skill to earn it, you’re not motivating him. You’re setting him up to fail in front of you. 

And when that happens again and again, something worse than a failed behavior chart happens. The child starts to believe you don’t understand him, that you don’t see how hard he’s actually trying, or that he’s simply “bad” at something everyone else seems to manage.

I want to be careful here, too. This is one study. The brain scans are cross-sectional, meaning they capture a moment in time, not a child’s development over the years. Dr. DelBello herself said this kind of imaging isn’t ready for everyday clinical use. It’s too expensive, and not yet precise enough for any one child. So this is exciting confirmation of what clinicians and parents have already observed. It is not a new diagnosis to hand in to your child’s school tomorrow.

One more thing I want to point out. The article opens by comparing these kids to two familiar characters: Veruca Salt, the spoiled girl from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who throws a tantrum the instant she doesn’t get what she wants, and Angelica Pickles, the bossy, volatile toddler from Rugrats known for her mood swings and tantrums. The comparison is “these kids, but turned up a few notches.” I understand the instinct. It’s vivid and relatable. But it’s also exactly the kind of character-based language that got us into trouble in the first place. These aren’t spoiled kids. They’re dysregulated kids. The whole point of this research is that the difference is neurological, not a matter of upbringing or will.

So, where does this leave us? If a child in your home or classroom explodes, shuts down, or seems immune to every reward you offer, that’s information, not defiance. The job isn’t to find a stronger consequence. It’s to understand what’s actually happening in that child’s brain, and build the skills that aren’t there yet.

That’s the work we do in the ADHD Parent Coach Academy and the ADHD Teacher Trainer Academy, through a process we call Creating Shared Solutions. It’s built around a simple shift: instead of asking how to get more compliance, you ask what’s getting in the way and what skill is actually missing. That question moves adults from confrontation to conversation, and kids from being managed to being taught. It’s how we help parents and educators start with the brain, so the behavior finally makes sense.

Pills don’t teach skills. Neither do reward charts, on their own. Parents, teachers, and the right kind of support do.

Source: Ariana Eunjung Cha, “Brain scans reveal 3 ADHD subtypes, including a more extreme form,” The Washington Post, April 30, 2026.

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Here’s the distinction that matters: there’s a real difference between teaching a skill and requesting a behavior.

Rewards work well when a task is already within a child’s capability, and they just need a nudge to do it consistently. Hanging up a towel. Taking shoes off at the door. The skill is already there. The reward just helps build the habit.

But when the goal is to teach a skill that’s genuinely lagging - managing frustration, starting a hard task, shifting attention from one thing to another - a reward doesn’t give the child what they’re missing. It adds pressure to produce an outcome they don’t yet know how to produce. That’s where it goes wrong. The child wants the reward, tries, still can’t do it, and now feels like a failure on top of already struggling. That’s worse off than before the reward was ever offered.

Why this shows up so clearly with ADHD

This distinction matters for any kid, but it becomes especially important - and especially misunderstood - when we’re talking about children with ADHD. So many of these kids are walking into classrooms and homes where behavior charts are already in place, often with good intentions and real success for other students.

A behavior chart assumes the child can already do the behavior consistently and just needs a reason to choose it. For a lot of neurotypical kids, that assumption holds up. Their executive function is intact enough that once they’re motivated, they can hold the goal in mind, remember it in the moment, manage the frustration of not doing what they’d rather be doing, and follow through. The chart just tips the scale toward the “right” choice.

With ADHD, the problem usually isn’t the wanting. Most of these kids want the sticker, the point, the privilege - often desperately. What’s missing is the executive function machinery that turns wanting into doing.

Working memory is part of it. A child may genuinely lose track of the goal in the middle of a school day, not because he doesn’t care, but because “remember to raise your hand” isn’t holding steady in his head over six hours of everything else going on.

Time and delay are part of it too. ADHD brains tend to run on “now” and “not now.” A reward promised at the end of the day or the end of the week doesn’t have much pull in the moment a child is flooded with frustration or boredom. The future reward simply isn’t real yet in a way that competes with what’s happening right now.

And emotional regulation is often the biggest piece. When the trigger hits, the chart isn’t what’s running the show. The nervous system is.

So the chart ends up measuring something the child doesn’t have full control over - and that’s exactly where it stops being neutral and starts doing harm. Every day the chart shows a missed mark, sometimes in front of the whole class, is another data point telling that child: I tried, and I still failed. That’s not a motivation problem being solved. That’s a child with a real neurological difference collecting repeated, public evidence that something is wrong with him.

It helps to put this as plainly as possible: a spelling chart wouldn’t help a child with dyslexia read faster. We don’t expect willpower to overcome a processing difference. Executive function works the same way. It’s a brain-based skill set, not a character trait. The chart isn’t a broken tool. It’s aimed at the wrong problem for these particular kids.

What to do instead

When a parent tells me, “his teacher has a great chart system, and it’s just not working for him,” that’s not evidence he needs a better chart. That’s information. It’s telling us the demand is exceeding his capacity to meet it in that moment - and that’s the piece worth sitting with before reaching for the next incentive system.

Rewards are a fine tool for maintaining behaviors that a child can already do. They’re the wrong tool when a child can’t yet do something and needs to be taught how, or when what we’re actually trying to build is the relationship and trust that makes real teaching possible in the first place.

This is the piece I come back to again and again, whether I’m training parent coaches to work with families, training teachers to recognize what’s happening in their classrooms, or sitting across from a parent who just wants to understand why the sticker chart stopped working around week two. The question is never “how do we get more compliance out of this reward?” The question is “what skill is actually missing here, and how do we build it together?”

That shift - from managing behavior to understanding what’s behind it - changes the whole conversation. It’s slower. It asks more of the adult in the room. But it’s also the only version of the conversation that actually teaches the child something that lasts longer than a sticker ever could.

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It was about the Boulder County Jail - and how, over the years, it has quietly become the county’s largest mental health facility. More than 60% of the people housed there have a diagnosed mental illness. Many arrived in crisis. Some had been waiting weeks or months for a hospital bed that never came. Some were placed in isolation, which research shows makes mental illness worse.

One woman - I’ll call her E.M., as the article does - held a job, attended community college, and lived independently. She also had a serious psychiatric condition. When her mental health provider dropped her for missing appointments, cutting off her medication, the crisis that followed landed her in jail. She spent nearly two years there.

The article is about Boulder. But I’ve seen versions of this story play out everywhere. I’m a counselor and ADHD specialist. I’ve spent more than two decades working with children, families, educators, and clinicians - and what the article doesn’t say, but what I’ve spent years thinking about and honestly trying to change, is how many of the people cycling through that system were never properly identified, understood, or supported long before any crisis ever began.

What we know about ADHD and incarceration

The research here is consistent and sobering.

Adults in prison are three times more likely to have ADHD than people in the general population. Among youth in detention, the rate is even higher - roughly five times what you’d expect. One meta-analysis put the prevalence of ADHD in adult prison populations at around 25%. Another recent estimate, using stricter diagnostic criteria, landed at about 1 in 12.

Whatever the exact number, the direction is clear: ADHD is dramatically overrepresented behind bars.

This isn’t because ADHD causes crime. It doesn’t. But untreated ADHD - the kind that was never named, never understood, never supported - creates conditions where things go wrong in compounding ways. Impulsivity without skills to manage it. Emotional dysregulation without anyone to help build those skills. Poor frustration tolerance, difficulty reading social cues, trouble planning ahead. Add poverty, trauma, and a school system that interpreted those struggles as laziness, lack of motivation, and defiance - and you have a pipeline, not a coincidence.

The child who couldn’t sit still in second grade. The teenager who got suspended more than he learned. The adult who lost jobs, relationships, housing - not because he didn’t care, but because his brain was working against him in ways no one ever helped him understand.

That’s not a criminal profile. That’s an unmet need that followed someone into adulthood.

The silence is the problem

My work is built on a simple premise: when children struggle, the problem is almost never a lack of trying. It’s a gap between what their brain can do right now and what the situation demands.

ADHD is not a failed version of normal. It is a different brain - one that processes the world differently, regulates attention and emotion differently, and requires a different kind of support.

When that support doesn’t come - no diagnosis, no framework, no one at home or school who understands what’s actually happening - the child fills the silence with their own explanation. I’m bad. I’m lazy. I can’t do anything right. Those stories don’t disappear. They compound.

And the system compounds them further. A classroom that punishes what it can’t explain. A discipline system that escalates. A mental health system - as the Boulder article makes painfully clear - that is underfunded, fragmented, and stretched so thin that people fall through gaps the size of chasms.

By the time someone ends up in a jail cell, there have been a hundred earlier moments when a different outcome was possible.

The other end of the same spectrum

Here’s what makes this so hard to sit with.

Research consistently finds that roughly 29% of entrepreneurs have ADHD. People with ADHD are estimated to be three times more likely to start their own businesses than their neurotypical peers. The same traits that create problems in a rigid, compliance-driven environment - risk tolerance, big-picture thinking, hyperfocus, the ability to hold ten ideas at once and act on them before others have finished deliberating - can become genuine assets in the right context.

The same brain. Different outcome.

What accounts for the difference? It’s not smarter parents or a harder work ethic. It’s whether someone had a framework. Whether there was an adult who understood what they were seeing. Whether the school connected with the family. Whether the family had access to information and support.

This is what I mean when I say ADHD is not the risk. The silence is.

What treating the system looks like

The Boulder article ends without resolution. E.M. left her assisted living home in May and went missing. Her mother spent two weeks calling hospitals. E.M. was eventually found outside in Denver, sunburned, sick, sleeping on the ground. She wasn’t arrested this time. But the systems that failed her - the gaps in care, the fragmented support, the jails filling the space where treatment should have been - remain intact.

That’s the weight of what happens when we treat the symptom and not the pattern. When we respond to the crisis and skip the years before it.

The kids I work with - and the families trying to support them - are navigating a version of this every day, at a much earlier stage. The stakes look smaller. They’re not.

What they need is a circle of support that actually holds: clinicians who connect families to frameworks, not just diagnoses. Parents who are coached, not just informed. Teachers who are trained to understand what ADHD actually looks like - not as defiance, but as a brain asking for help in the only language it has.

None of that is simple. But it is knowable. And it is possible.

The child in the classroom who can’t sit still is not a future cautionary tale. That child is showing you something. The question is whether anyone is positioned to see it - and to respond in a way that changes what comes next.

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The school year is ending. Or it already has.

And before we all move on to summer schedules and whatever comes next, I want to stop and say something I don’t think gets said enough:

Thank you.

Not the obligatory, end-of-year thank you. The real one.

Teaching is hard. It has always been hard. But teaching kids with ADHD - kids whose brains make it genuinely difficult to sit still, stay focused, remember instructions, manage frustration, or keep track of anything - that is a particular kind of hard.

You were asked to differentiate instruction, manage behavior, track individual progress, communicate with parents, meet compliance requirements, and somehow also just... teach. All at once. In a room full of kids with wildly different needs, on a budget that probably didn’t cover half of what you needed, for a salary that most people would not accept for what you actually do.

And some of you - many of you - went further. You noticed the kid who was struggling before anyone else did. You shifted your approach without being asked. You called home not to report a problem, but to say something was going well. You gave a child a reason to come back the next day.

That matters more than you may ever know.

For kids with ADHD, school can feel like a place where they are always behind, always in trouble, always the problem. One teacher who sees them differently can change that story. Sometimes permanently.

So from a parent, a professional, and someone who has spent decades working alongside you - thank you. For what you do, and for what it costs you to do it.

Enjoy your summer. You earned it.

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Part of that framework came from a landmark 2007 study out of the National Institutes of Mental Health - work that Russell Barkley and others drew on extensively. The finding: the brains of children with ADHD mature more slowly, roughly 30%, or about 2 to 3 years behind their peers. It became foundational. I taught it. Most people in this field taught it.

New research has changed part of that picture, and I think it’s important to share with you all.

What the New Research Found

Published in May 2026 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this study used data from over 11,000 children and 26,000 brain scans - one of the largest neuroimaging studies of its kind. Researchers set out to replicate the original finding.

At first, they did. The same pattern appeared.

But then they looked more carefully. They accounted for something the earlier studies hadn’t: the fact that boys’ and girls’ brains naturally develop at different rates. Boys’ cortexes thin more slowly than girls’ as a matter of typical development. Since boys are diagnosed with ADHD at much higher rates, the earlier dataset had quietly skewed toward reflecting boys’ typical development - and researchers had been reading that as an ADHD-specific delay.

When they corrected for sex differences over time, the delayed maturation signal disappeared.

The conclusion: what looked like a hallmark of the ADHD brain was likely a mirage in the data.

What This Does - and Doesn’t - Change

I want to be clear about something, because this is where it matters for the parents, educators, and clinicians I work with.

This finding is specifically about one type of brain measurement: cortical thickness on an MRI. It challenges the structural, neuroimaging evidence for delayed maturation. It does not overturn what we know about how ADHD affects executive function - the skills children rely on every day to manage themselves, their attention, their emotions, and their behavior.

That evidence comes from entirely different research - cognitive testing, behavioral data, functional brain studies, and neurotransmitter research. And it is well-supported.

What we still know to be true:

• The prefrontal cortex - the brain’s manager for planning, self-control, and attention - works differently in kids with ADHD. It is less efficient at regulating behavior, attention, emotions, and follow-through than peers without ADHD.

• The loading and releasing of key neurotransmitters - dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin - is less consistent. This directly affects focus, alertness, and the ability to sustain effort.

• There is under-stimulation in the parts of the brain responsible for reward and motivation, which is why kids with ADHD often need more novelty, urgency, or interest to engage.

• None of this has anything to do with intelligence. It has everything to do with how the brain is wired.

The specific claim that needs updating is the “30%, 2-3 years behind” figure - particularly when it’s framed as a structural brain finding. The evidence for that precise claim is now on shakier ground. The broader truth - that executive function develops on a different timeline in kids with ADHD, and that this gap is real and significant - still stands. We just need to hold the specific numbers more loosely.

Why This Matters Beyond the Science

Here’s what I keep coming back to: the reason that the “years behind” framework resonated so deeply wasn’t the neuroscience. It was what it permitted people to do.

It gave parents permission to stop expecting a 10-year-old with ADHD to regulate like a 10-year-old without it. It gave teachers a way to understand why a student who seemed capable kept falling short. It shifted the story from “this child isn’t trying” to “this child’s brain is working differently.”

That shift still matters. The science supporting it is still real. What’s changed is one piece of the evidence - not the conclusion it pointed toward.

Understanding why a child struggles is never just an academic exercise. It changes how you respond in the moment. It changes whether you lean in with curiosity or frustration. It changes whether a child feels seen or blamed.

That’s what I’ve spent my career working toward - in how I train clinicians to coach parents, in how I work with schools, in how I support families directly. The knowledge isn’t the endpoint. It’s what we do with it.

What I’ll Be Doing Differently

I’m updating my teaching materials to reflect this. The “30%, 2-3 years behind” figure will come out. In its place: language that stays close to what we actually know - that executive function skills develop on a different timeline, that the gap is meaningful, and that our job is to meet kids where they are rather than where we expect them to be.

The research will keep evolving. It always does. My commitment is to stay current, to say so when something changes, and to make sure that what I’m teaching is as accurate as I can make it.

If you’ve heard me use the “years behind” framing before - in a workshop, a training, or something you read - this is the update. The heart of it hasn’t changed. The precision has.

What questions does this raise for you? And if you work with kids with ADHD - as a parent, educator, or clinician - what has the “developmental delay” framing meant in how you understand them?

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Every summer, parents wonder: Will my child be okay at camp?

It’s a fair question. Camp is unstructured, social, and full of transitions - exactly the conditions that are hardest for kids with ADHD.

I sat down with Dan Selmer, a psychotherapist who works inside a traditional day camp, to talk about what he actually sees. And what helps.

Read the full article here as it appears in CHADD’s Attention Magazine: Why Camp Can Be So Hard for Kids with ADHD

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One of the most common concerns I hear from adults with ADHD is, “Why is it so hard to make good friends?”

It’s not something people often say out loud. But for neurodivergent adults, it shows up everywhere - in overthinking conversations, feeling unsure where you stand, wondering why everyone else seems to have buckets of friends.

In my work coaching parents of kids and teens with ADHD, I see how often the social struggles don’t disappear in adulthood. They just get quieter - and lonelier.

That’s why I was eager to speak with Caroline Maguire, author of Friendship Skills for Neurodivergent Adults. Caroline has spent decades helping individuals understand the unspoken rules of social connection - and what to do when those rules were never clearly explained.

What she offers is both practical and deeply validating. A way to make sense of something that has felt confusing for far too long.

Cindy: This book tackles something many adults quietly struggle with. What made you decide to write about friendship specifically for neurodivergent adults?

Caroline: Over the years, I kept hearing the same theme. Adults would come in saying, “I try. I really try. But something keeps going wrong.” They were not lacking effort or desire. They were missing information and skills.

Here’s the truth - friendship is taught indirectly. Most people are expected to absorb the ins and outs of making friends through observation and intuition. But if your brain does not pick up on those cues automatically, you’re left trying to reverse-engineer something everyone else seems to “just know.” I wanted to make those invisible rules visible.

Cindy: You often talk about the “hidden curriculum” of friendship. What does that mean?

Caroline: The hidden curriculum is everything we are expected to understand but no one explicitly teaches. Things like how long to talk to someone, when to shift topics, how to show interest without overdoing it, or how to repair after a misstep.

These are not small details - they are the structure of connection. When you don’t have access to them, it’s easy to misread situations or feel like you’re always slightly out of sync.

CINDY’S NOTE

This mirrors something I hear constantly from the parents I coach - and from the professionals I train through my ADHD Parent Coach Academy. The assumption that kids will “just figure out” social connection follows them right into adulthood.

Cindy: Many people assume friendship should feel natural. What do you want readers to understand about why it often does not?

Caroline: We have created this idea that friendship is instinctive, but it is actually a set of skills. Like any skill, it can be learned, practiced, and refined.

For neurodivergent individuals, there may be differences in how they process social information, track multiple cues, or interpret tone and timing. That does not mean they are bad at friendship. It means they have been expected to learn in a way that does not match how their brain works.

Cindy: You describe moments where people replay conversations afterward. What is actually happening there?

Caroline: That replay is often someone trying to find clarity after the fact. In the moment, there may have been too many signals to process at once - facial expressions, tone shifts, group dynamics.

Later, when everything slows down, they start asking, “Wait, what did that mean?” That is not overthinking. It is delayed processing. Once you understand that, you can start to build strategies that support your brain in real time.

Cindy: One of the themes in your book is learning to “read the room.” How do you teach something that feels so abstract?

Caroline: I break it down into observable pieces. Instead of saying “read the room,” we look at specific cues. Who is talking? Who is quiet? How fast is the conversation moving? Are people building on each other’s ideas or shifting topics quickly?

When you turn something abstract into something concrete, it becomes much more manageable. You are no longer guessing - you’re noticing and attending to what’s right in front of you.

Cindy: You also talk about skills like timing, reciprocity, and repair. Which do adults struggle with most?

Caroline: Repair is a big one. Many people think a misstep means the relationship is damaged or over. In reality, repair is part of a healthy friendship.

It’s knowing how to circle back if something feels awkward or clunky. Knowing how to clarify or restate your thoughts for better delivery. And acknowledging when something did not land the way you intended. These are the actions that build trust between friends over time.

Cindy: There is a lot of shame tied to feeling “bad at friendship.” How did you approach writing about this?

Caroline: I was very intentional about language. Instead of labeling someone as awkward or “too much,” I describe what is happening in a situation.

Cindy: Your book moves from understanding friendship to actually finding your people. What do most adults get wrong about that step?

Caroline: They assume proximity equals compatibility. Just because you are around someone does not mean they are your person.

Finding your people requires noticing shared values, mutual effort, and how you feel after spending time together. It is less about forcing connection and more about recognizing alignment.

Cindy: You also address friendship at work. What makes workplace friendships different?

Caroline: There are additional layers - professional expectations, boundaries, and power dynamics. That can make it harder to know how much to share, when to initiate, or how to move from coworker to friend. But it is also one of the most common places adults build connections, so it is important to understand how it works.

CINDY’S NOTE

This is something that comes up in my educator training work, too. Teachers and school staff navigate these same layered dynamics every day - and rarely have language for why it feels so complicated.

Cindy: You draw from a range of voices and experiences. How did those conversations shape your perspective?

Caroline: They grounded the work in lived experience. Research is important, but it does not always capture the nuance of what it feels like to be in these moments. Hearing how people navigate masking, identity, or social fatigue added depth. It reminded me that there is not one right way to connect. There are many ways, and they all need to be honored.

Cindy: What surprised you most while writing this book?

Caroline: How many adults were carrying the same quiet question: “Why is this so hard for me to make and keep friends?” Once you realize how common that experience is, it shifts the narrative. It is not an individual failure - it is a reflection of the gap between how we teach and talk about connection.

Cindy: For someone who feels stuck or discouraged, what is one small shift that can make a difference?

Caroline: Start by observing, not judging. Instead of asking, “What did I do wrong?” ask, “What happened in that interaction?” That small shift creates space for learning instead of self-criticism or self-blame.

Cindy: If readers take away one core idea from this book, what do you hope it is?

Caroline: That friendship is not something you are either good at or not. It is something you can understand. And once you understand it, you can approach it in a way that works for you.

Caroline’s work is a reminder that connection is not about becoming someone else. It is about having the tools to show up as yourself with clarity and confidence. As someone who works with families and professionals navigating neurodivergent brains every day, I’m glad books like this exist - and that conversations like this one are finally happening out loud.

If this feels familiar, you’re not alone - and there’s a way forward.

Friendship Skills for Neurodivergent Adults by Caroline Maguire →

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Over 2,000 professionals signed up for a webinar I gave last week.

Educators, therapists, coaches, and clinicians who all want a better understanding and better tools.
Most were never formally taught how ADHD and Executive Function actually impact learning, behavior, motivation, regulation, and daily functioning.

And we continue expecting kids to succeed in systems that often misunderstand them.

So many people genuinely want to help.

But caring and understanding are not always the same thing.

I created a shorter video based on highlights from that webinar because this conversation feels too important to stay inside one live event.

You can watch the video here

A few ideas I hope stay with you:

• Challenging behavior often happens when demands exceed a child’s capacity in that moment. We tend to react to the behavior without understanding what’s driving it.

• ADHD is not a motivation problem or a character flaw. It is a neurological difference that affects regulation, attention, motivation, follow-through, and Executive Function.

• Real change rarely happens by focusing only on the child. It happens through the adults supporting them.

• Most educators and professionals received very little formal training in ADHD or Executive Function, despite working with these children every single day.

• Some professionals feel most called to support parents and families directly.

• Others feel drawn to helping educators and schools create more supportive environments for students.

That distinction matters.

Because helping families and helping schools require different kinds of training, different conversations, and different systems-level understanding.

That’s why I created two separate professional training programs.

If your work centers around supporting parents and families, the ADHD Parent Coach Academy (APCA) prepares professionals to guide parents using a brain-based, relationship-centered framework grounded in Executive Function, regulation, communication, and connection.

If your passion is helping educators and schools better support students with ADHD, the ADHD Teacher Trainer Academy (ATTA) prepares professionals to train and consult with schools using practical, research-informed strategies that actually work in real classrooms.

For my Substack community, I’m also offering a special bonus through Sunday, May 17, at midnight ET.

ADHD Parent Coach Academy (APCA)

Starts May 27

• Second year of licensing included free ($650 value)

• Signed copy of 8 Keys to Parenting Kids & Teens with ADHD

https://ptscoaching.com/APCAcourse

ADHD Teacher Trainer Academy (ATTA)

Starts June 2

• Second year of licensing included free ($525 value)

• Signed copy of ADHD, Executive Function & Behavioral Challenges in the Classroom

https://ptscoaching.com/ATTAcourse

And if you’re not sure which direction fits your work best, feel free to reach out.

I’m always happy to help people think through where their strengths, interests, and goals align.

We know far more about ADHD now than we did years ago.

The work ahead is helping homes, schools, and professionals respond in ways that reflect what we now understand about ADHD, Executive Function, behavior, and regulation.

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Over the past few decades, I’ve had the privilege of working with parents raising young children - watching them wrestle with behavior, school systems, emotional regulation, and the daily work of building connection.

Now many of those children are adults raising babies of their own.

And I’m watching something I didn’t expect.

The Gap Between Intent and Impact

In my work, I spend a lot of time thinking about how people communicate - specifically, how the same intention can land so differently depending on who’s receiving it. A parent says, “I just want to help,” and a child hears, “I don’t trust you.” A child says, “I need space,” and a parent hears, “I don’t want you.”

That gap - between intent and impact - shows up constantly in my work with families. What I didn’t fully anticipate was how clearly it would play out between generations of adults.

Baby Boomers, many of whom pushed back against the emotional rigidity of their own upbringings, raised their children with a different set of values: connection, warmth, involvement. Love often meant anticipating needs. Closeness was demonstrated through presence - staying near, offering before being asked, tuning in without being told.

Millennials, raised within that more emotionally attuned environment, came of age in a culture that added a new layer: therapy, boundaries, individuation. They were taught to name their needs, protect their mental health, and differentiate themselves from family systems in order to become whole adults. For them, love often means respect for autonomy. Naming needs directly isn’t withholding - it’s healthy communication.

These aren’t opposing values. They are two dialects of the same language.

When No One Says a Word

In the older model, love often involved anticipating one another’s needs without being asked. In the newer model, adults are responsible for naming their needs directly. Mind-reading is no longer considered evidence of closeness - it’s considered an emotional burden.

So when a grandparent waits for an update and feels hurt that one wasn’t offered, the younger parent may not notice the gap at all. Their working assumption is: If someone needs something, they’ll say so.

And when a younger parent shares selectively or less frequently, they’re likely protecting their bandwidth - not withdrawing love.

The misunderstanding is subtle. And most of the time, nobody says a word. The grandparent doesn’t mention the hurt. The younger parent doesn’t know it happened. And so both people carry something that could have been resolved with one honest sentence.

Here is what those sentences might actually sound like.

If you’re in the older generation:

• “I want you to know I’m trying hard to respect your space, but sometimes when I don’t hear much, I end up feeling more disconnected than I think you realize.”

• “I don’t need to be involved in every detail, but small updates help me feel connected and included in your life.”

If you’re in the younger generation:

• “If I seem brief or slow to respond sometimes, it’s usually because I’m overwhelmed - not because I don’t want you in our lives.”

• “I may not always think to share things proactively, but that doesn’t reflect how much I love or value you.”

Nobody is expecting perfection. Just a little more of the truth, said out loud.

What Developmental Shift Actually Feels Like

When children are young, parents are at the heart of each other’s world. That’s the nature of the work. It’s part of what makes parenting so consuming and so meaningful. But when children become adults, everything shifts. They build new primary attachments. They become the center of their own families. And the parents who raised them move - gently or not so gently - to a different place in the picture.

This is developmentally appropriate. Expected, even. But knowing that doesn’t always make it easier to feel.

In my work, I often remind the families I sit with that behavior that looks like rejection is frequently just differentiation - someone moving toward independence, not away from love. The reflex to personalize is understandable. It’s also usually inaccurate.

For many in the Boomer generation, being needed was intertwined with being loved. When adult children function independently, it stirs a quiet question: If they don’t need me in the same way, where do I stand?

The answer - and it truly is a good one - is that their independence is often the outcome those parents worked so hard to create. They raised children who can think for themselves, set limits, and build their own families. That differentiation isn’t rejection. It’s development.

The Part That’s Harder to Say

This dynamic, as understandable as it is on both sides, is not entirely equal.

The younger generation’s need for space is met in the very act of asking for it. They set the pace, control the information, and decide the rhythm of contact. Their need for autonomy is, by definition, honored in the moment they assert it.

The older generation is left holding something with nowhere to put it - love with nowhere to land, worry with no productive outlet, and the quiet grief of feeling on the outside of something that matters enormously to them. They can’t call more - that would be overstepping. They can’t say they’re hurting - that would be a burden. So they wait. And they worry. And they try to want less than they actually want.

A Gentle Ask for the Younger Generation

So if you’re in the younger generation, here’s a gentle ask - not a guilt trip, I promise.

The next time you feel frustrated that your mother called again, or your father sent another article you didn’t ask for - before you sigh, consider what’s underneath it. They are not trying to crowd you. They are trying to say: I love you and I don’t know what to do with that right now.

You don’t have to let go of your limits. You don’t have to explain yourself or over-communicate. But one small, unprompted text - not because they asked, just because you thought of them - can do more than you know. It doesn’t cost much. And to someone sitting with unmet needs and nowhere to put them, it can feel like everything.

Most people can accept almost anything when they feel seen inside it. That goes both ways.

It’s Still a Love Conversation

What helps - on both sides - is the same thing I work toward with every family I sit with: explicit communication.

Adult relationships require renegotiation. Closeness in adulthood isn’t automatic simply because childhood was warm. It has to be redefined - out loud.

That doesn’t mean abandoning limits. It means remembering that the person on the other side of them is probably not trying to be difficult - they’re trying to feel close in the only way they know how.

A grandparent who calls too often isn’t usually trying to intrude. They’re trying to say: I still want to be part of this. A younger parent who asks for more space isn’t withdrawing love. They’re trying to protect the little they have left at the end of a very hard day.

When both people can hold that at once - my need is real, and so is yours - the conversation changes. It stops being about who’s right and starts being about how to find each other again. That’s not a boundary conversation. That’s a love conversation.

Two Dialects. One Language.

I’ve spent decades helping families learn to hear each other across difference - across diagnosis, across temperament, across generations. What I keep finding, every time, is that the gap between people is almost never about love. It’s almost always about language.

The fact that these conversations are happening at all is its own kind of progress. A generation that worked hard to raise emotionally aware children largely succeeded. Those children grew into adults who value clarity and autonomy. The task now isn’t to undo that. It’s to keep translating.

Two dialects. One language. And learning to speak across that gap - at any age, in any direction - is one of the most loving things any of us can do.

I’d love to hear from you.

If you're in the older generation - what has been the hardest part of this shift for you?

If you’re in the younger generation - is there something you wish your parents better understood about what you’re carrying right now?

Either way - I’m reading every comment.

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Many parents have had the experience of sitting across from their child’s teacher, or therapist, or school counselor - someone who is clearly kind, clearly trying - and leaving the meeting feeling more alone than when they walked in.

Not because anyone was unkind. But because something essential about their child just didn’t land.

Maybe the professional focused on grades when the real struggle was getting started. Maybe they suggested strategies that assumed a level of organization your child simply doesn’t have yet. Maybe they said “he just needs to apply himself” - and you didn’t have the words to explain why that’s not how it works.

That gap is real. And it matters. But it’s worth understanding where it comes from.

The problem isn’t caring. It’s that ADHD and executive function weren’t part of most professional training programs.

IT’S NOT INDIFFERENCE. IT’S A TRAINING GAP.

Most of the professionals in your child’s life - teachers, school counselors, pediatricians, even many therapists - genuinely want to help. The problem isn’t caring. It’s that ADHD and executive function weren’t part of most professional training programs.

What that means in practice: a teacher can have 20 years of experience and still not fully understand why a bright kid can’t get started on an assignment, why he loses track of homework he actually did, or why a small correction in front of the class can derail his entire afternoon. It doesn’t mean she’s a bad teacher. It means she learned a different model - one that assumes motivation drives behavior, and that the right consequences will produce the right results.

For kids with ADHD, that model doesn’t hold. Executive function challenges affect the very skills a child needs to respond to those expectations - initiating, organizing, regulating emotions, managing time. When professionals don’t understand that, they often end up working against the child without meaning to.

Understanding this won't fix everything. But it can change how you show up for your child.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

You can’t train every professional your child works with. But you can give them something most parents never think to provide: a clear, honest picture of who your child actually is.

Not the diagnosis. Not the test scores. The child.

What are his strengths? What does it look like when he’s stuck versus when he’s defiant? What has worked, and what makes things worse? What does he need from a relationship with an adult before he can take direction from them?

When professionals have that information - in plain language, from you - it changes the conversation. It gives them something to work with beyond what’s in the file.

I put together a sample description to show what this can look like, written around a composite 7th-grade boy many of you will recognize. There’s also a blank template so you can write your own. [Link to resource]

Advocating effectively for your child requires understanding his challenges at a level most parents haven’t had the chance to develop.

BUT FIRST - YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND IT YOURSELF

Here’s something that doesn’t get said enough: advocating effectively for your child requires understanding his challenges at a level most parents haven’t had the chance to develop.

It’s not enough to know the diagnosis. You need to understand how ADHD and executive function challenges affect your child’s learning, his motivation, his emotional regulation, and your family as a whole - so you can choose the right professionals, ask the right questions, and know when something isn’t working.

That understanding is something parents build over time, often through their own reading, through working with a coach, or through programs specifically designed to help them get there. When parents have that foundation, everything else - the meetings, the advocacy, the day-to-day conversations with teachers - gets clearer.

SOME EMPATHY FOR THE PROFESSIONALS

It’s also worth saying this plainly: many professionals are being asked to support children with ADHD in ways they were never trained to do - and they know it.

A good teacher can feel the gap between what a student needs and what she knows how to provide. A school counselor may recognize that a child is struggling but not have the framework to understand why or what to do differently. They are not failing your child on purpose. They are doing their best with what they have.

They stop asking “why won’t he just do it?” and start asking “what does he need in order to do it?” That’s a different question. And it leads to very different support.

What changes things is knowledge. When a professional understands the ADHD brain - not just the behaviors, but the underlying challenges driving them - their whole approach shifts. They stop asking “why won’t he just do it?” and start asking “what does he need in order to do it?” That’s a different question. And it leads to very different support.

RESOURCES YOU CAN SHARE

If you have a professional in your child’s life who genuinely wants to understand more, you can help point them in the right direction.

• CHADD (chadd.org) - The leading national organization for ADHD support and education, with resources for both parents and professionals.

• ADDitude Magazine (additudemag.com) - Practical, research-based articles for parents, educators, and clinicians.

• PTS Coaching (ptscoaching.com) - Resources, coaching, and training programs for parents, educators, and allied professionals supporting children and teens with ADHD and executive function challenges.

There are also formal training programs specifically designed to help clinicians and educators develop the skills to support families navigating ADHD - not just with information, but with practical tools they can use right away. If you work with a professional who is looking for that kind of training, programs like the ADHD Parent Coach Academy and the ADHD Teacher Trainer Academy exist precisely to fill that gap.

WHAT CHANGES WHEN EVERYONE IN THE ROOM UNDERSTANDS

When a parent walks in with a clear picture of their child - and a professional has the training to receive it - the whole dynamic shifts. It stops being a meeting where a parent has to fight to be believed, and starts being a conversation about what will actually help.

What parents want, more than anything, is to feel that their child is truly seen. When that happens - when the right knowledge meets the right relationship - everything gets a little easier for everyone in the room.

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If you work with kids who have ADHD, you’ve probably had this experience.

You give a parent or teacher a strategy. It makes sense. It’s solid. And a few weeks later, nothing has changed.

The child is still struggling. The adults are still frustrated. And everyone - parents, teachers, the child - feels like they’re failing.

It’s not the strategies that are the problem. It’s what most adults don’t yet understand about what’s actually happening in the ADHD brain.

The part that often gets skipped

ADHD isn’t about effort or attitude. It’s a difference in how the brain develops and regulates itself - specifically in the area of Executive Function. That’s the set of skills that manage time, attention, emotions, impulse control, and the ability to start, shift, and complete tasks.

When those skills are underdeveloped, it shows up everywhere. At the homework table. In the classroom. At breakfast. During transitions. In friendships.

And here’s what matters most for anyone supporting these kids: it shows up differently at home than it does at school.

A child can hold it together all day in class - and then completely fall apart the moment they walk through the front door. Teachers may not see what parents deal with every night. Parents may not understand why the school is raising concerns about a child who seems fine at home on weekends.

This disconnect is one of the biggest barriers to real change. And it’s the reason that strategies passed along without context so often don’t stick.

What parents genuinely need

Most parents of kids with ADHD are not lacking information. They’ve read the articles. They’ve tried the charts and the timers and the reward systems.

What they’re often missing is someone who can help them understand their child’s brain - not just their behavior. Someone who can help them move from reactive to intentional. From daily battles to something that actually feels sustainable.

That shift doesn’t happen from advice. It happens through guided support.

What educators need - and rarely get

Teachers want to help. Most of them are doing their best with what they have. But ADHD-specific training is rarely part of teacher preparation programs, and professional development on this topic is inconsistent at best.

When educators understand the neuroscience, when they can see the behavior as a skill gap instead of a choice, everything changes. The way they respond. The way they communicate with parents - the way they set up their classroom.

That training matters. And right now, the professionals who can deliver it are in short supply.

A free live training - this Thursday

On Thursday, May 7th, I’m hosting a free 60-minute live webinar for educators, clinicians, coaches, and school-based professionals who want to go deeper on this work.

What Actually Helps Kids with ADHD - and Why So Many Strategies Fall Short

Thursday, May 7 - 7:00 PM ET | 6:00 PM CT | 5:00 PM MT | 4:00 PM PT
Live on Zoom | 60 minutes + Q&A

We’ll cover:

• Why kids with ADHD keep struggling even when everyone is trying their hardest

• How ADHD and Executive Function challenges look different at home and at school - and why that gap creates so many problems

• What parents actually need to hear, and how to say it in a way that lands

• How real change happens for kids - and the role professionals like you play in making that possible

I’ll also be sharing information about two professional training programs through PTS Coaching - the ADHD Parent Coach Academy (APCA) and the ADHD Teacher Trainer Academy (ATTA) - designed to give you the skills, structure, and support to do this work with confidence.

This is a no-pressure training. Come to learn, come to explore, and you’ll leave with a clearer sense of what’s possible for the kids and families you serve.

Register Here for Free Webinar

Space is limited. If this is your work - or you want it to be - I’d love to have you there.

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In my recent article 504 Plans and IEPs: Helping Your Child Get the Support They Need, my coach Jodi walked through the what - what these plans are, how they differ, and how to navigate the process as a parent.
I want to build on that with something equally important:

What schools are actually required to do when it comes to ADHD.

Because this is where I see the biggest gap - not just in understanding ADHD, but in understanding the law.

There is a document that every parent should know about:

U.S. Department of Education – Dear Colleague Letter on ADHD (July 26, 2016)
https://www.ed.gov/media/document/dear-colleague-letter-and-resource-guide-students-adhd-2016-35074.pdf

This letter was written to clarify schools’ responsibilities under Section 504.
And it directly addresses many of the misconceptions parents run into.

The Most Important Takeaways (in plain language)

1. Schools must evaluate when ADHD is suspected

Schools are required to evaluate a student if there is reason to suspect a disability.

That means:

• You do not need a failing child

• You do not need a crisis

• You do not need to “wait and see”

If your child is struggling, that is enough to start the process.

2. Good grades do not disqualify a child

This is one of the biggest misunderstandings I see.

A child can be:

• Bright

• Performing at grade level

• Even doing “well enough”

…and still qualify for support.

Because the question is not:
“Are they passing?”

The question is:
“How hard is it for them to function?”

3. ADHD impacts more than academics

The law is clear that schools must consider major life activities like:

• Concentrating

• Thinking

• Regulating behavior

• Managing tasks

• Communicating

This is Executive Function.

So when a child:

• melts down

• avoids work

• can’t get started

• loses track of time

• struggles with transitions

That matters.

4. Schools must look at functional impact, not just performance

This is where many conversations go sideways.

A child might:

• finish the work

• get the answers right

• keep up academically

But if they are:

• exhausted

• dysregulated

• needing constant adult support

• falling apart at home

That is not the same as “fine.”

One important piece many parents don’t realize

The guidance in this letter applies to public schools.

These protections are built into the public education system and are part of what ensures students with ADHD are identified, evaluated, and supported.

Private schools may absolutely offer support - and many do - but they are not held to these same legal requirements in the same way.

This isn’t about one setting being “better” than another.
But it is important to understand what support is guaranteed, and what is not, so you can advocate effectively and make informed decisions for your child.

What this means for younger children

For younger kids (like many of the families I work with), schools often say:

• “They’re young”

• “This is developmental”

• “Let’s wait”

And sometimes that’s appropriate.

But often, what’s really happening is this:

The child is already showing a mismatch between what is expected and what they can manage.

At age 5, 6, 7… that shows up as:

• difficulty with transitions

• impulsivity

• emotional outbursts

• trouble following routines

• needing far more support than peers

The law still applies.

The question becomes:
Is your child accessing the classroom in the same way as other students?

Where this connects back to Jodi’s article

Jodi did a beautiful job explaining the difference between a 504 Plan and an IEP.

But here’s the piece I always want parents to hold onto:

The plan itself is not the goal.

The goal is:

• understanding how your child’s brain works

• identifying where they are struggling

• putting supports in place that actually help

Because, as she said so clearly:
A plan only works if the adults understand what they are supporting.

Schools are not intentionally withholding support

Most of the time, they simply:

• don’t fully understand ADHD

• rely on outdated assumptions

• look at performance instead of process

Which is why parents so often hear:

• “They’re doing fine”

• “Let’s wait”

• “They’ll grow out of it”

This letter exists to correct that.

If you take one thing from this

You don’t need to prove your child is failing.

You need to be able to say:

That’s the conversation.

And when that conversation is grounded in understanding — not just paperwork — everything starts to shift.

If you want help knowing what to say (and how to say it)

This is exactly the kind of situation we work through in Calm and Connected: Parenting Children and Teens with ADHD/Executive Function Challenges and in our one-on-one support for parents.

We don’t just talk about what your child needs -
we help you understand:

• what’s actually driving the behavior

• how to respond in the moment

• how to advocate with clarity and confidence

• and how to work with schools in a way that leads to real change

If you’re feeling unsure of what to say or how to move forward with your child’s school, you don’t have to figure that out on your own.

You can learn more here:
https://ptscoaching.com/parents/

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Does this sound familiar?

“Stop telling me what to do.”
Or just: “I know.”
Or the one that stings a bit more: “I wasn’t asking for advice.”

If you’re parenting a pre-teen or teen, you’ve likely heard some version of this. And it’s confusing.

Because just minutes earlier, your child was talking. Sharing. Walking you through what happened with a friend, a teacher, a situation that clearly isn’t going well.

So of course, you step in. You offer a suggestion. A better way to handle it. Something they could say next time. You’re trying to help.

And suddenly, the door closes.

What Changes Over Time

This shift doesn’t happen overnight.

When kids are younger, they bring everything to you. The play-by-play of recess. Who said what. Who didn’t share. Who hurt their feelings. And naturally, you respond. You guide. You explain. You help them think through what to do next.

That role becomes familiar. Expected. Comfortable. You are the one who helps them figure things out.

But over time, something changes.

They still come to you. They still talk. But they are no longer always looking for direction. They’re looking for something else.

A Familiar Moment

I was talking with a parent recently who described a familiar pattern.

Her daughter would come home and immediately start sharing something that happened with her friends. There was tension, confusion, and hurt feelings. The parent listened for a few minutes, then jumped in with what felt like a helpful suggestion.

“Why don’t you just say this to her tomorrow?”

Her daughter shut down.

“I know.”

Conversation over.

The parent walked away frustrated. “I don’t understand. She came to me. Why wouldn’t she want help?”

What’s Actually Happening

Here’s what’s often happening in that moment.

Your child isn’t coming to you for solutions. They’re coming to you to process. To sort out what they’re thinking and feeling in real time. To hear themselves say it out loud and make sense of it.

When we move too quickly into advice, it interrupts that process. It can unintentionally feel like pressure, correction, or even judgment.

For kids with ADHD and executive function challenges, who often process out loud, this matters even more. Talking is part of how they think.

When we jump ahead to solutions, we’re moving faster than their brain is ready for.

A Simple Shift

This is where a small shift can change everything.

Before you respond, ask:
Do you want to be helped, hugged, or heard?

Most kids know the answer immediately. And the answer tells you how to show up.

If they want help, you can problem-solve together. If they want to be heard, your job is to listen, reflect, and stay with them. If they want comfort, connection comes first.

You can also shift how you respond by using more observational, low-pressure language - what I often refer to as declarative language - which helps your child think without feeling pushed.

What This Really Means

The question itself isn’t the point. What matters is that you’re shifting your response to match their need.

You’re no longer stepping in as the problem-solver by default. You’re stepping in as the person who helps them figure out what they need in that moment.

Why This Is Hard

This can be uncomfortable.

It means holding back when you see something clearly. It means tolerating the pause instead of jumping in. It means trusting that your child can get there, with you beside them, rather than directing them.

It also means letting go of the idea that being helpful always means giving advice.

What Changes When You Do This

When parents begin to make this shift, they notice something important. Their child keeps talking longer. They open up more often. The defensiveness decreases.

And over time, when they do want help, they’re more willing to hear it. Because it’s coming in a way that matches what they’re ready for.

Staying in Your Role

This doesn’t mean you stop guiding your child.

It means you choose your moments more intentionally. You build connection first, so your influence actually lands.

A Different Kind of Parenting

Parenting older kids, especially those with ADHD and executive function challenges, requires a different kind of leadership.

Less directing. More understanding.
Less reacting. More observing.

You’re still incredibly important. But your role is evolving.

And when you adjust how you show up, your child doesn’t pull away. They lean in.

A Final Thought

If this dynamic feels familiar, you’re not alone.

This is the kind of shift I work on with parents every day - helping you understand what’s happening beneath the surface and how to respond in a way that keeps the relationship strong while still building skills over time.

If you’re wanting more support around this, you can learn more here:
https://ptscoaching.com/parents/

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When parents hear terms like 504 Plan or IEP, the conversation often centers on eligibility, services, and paperwork.

But for children with ADHD and Executive Function challenges, the more important question is this:
Do the adults supporting this child understand how their brain works?

When that understanding is in place, the plan becomes more than a document. It becomes a tool that actually supports learning, regulation, and skill development.

In this article, Jodi Hogan, a facilitator in my ADHD Parent Coach Academy, walks through the differences between 504 Plans and IEPs and how to approach school support in a way that is both practical and grounded.

504 Plans and IEPs: Helping Your Child Get the Support They Need
By Jodi Hogan, ADHD Parent Coach Academy Facilitator

At some point, many parents of children with ADHD and Executive Function challenges hear a teacher say something like:
“Your child may benefit from a 504 Plan.” or “We may want to explore an IEP.”

For a lot of parents, that moment can feel confusing or even overwhelming. What do those terms mean? How are they different? And how do you know what your child actually needs?

The good news is that both 504 Plans and IEPs exist for the same reason: to help your child access learning and succeed in school. Understanding the difference—and knowing how to ask the right questions—can make the process feel much more manageable.

So, what’s the Difference Between a 504 Plan and an IEP?

A 504 Plan provides accommodations that help a child learn in the general classroom. These supports level the playing field but don’t change the curriculum. It’s like giving someone glasses because they can’t see clearly.

For many students with ADHD and Executive Function challenges, a 504 Plan supports areas like attention, organization, time management, and follow-through—skills that impact learning, even when a child understands the material.

Examples might include:

• Extended time on tests

• Preferential seating

• Movement breaks

• Help with organization

• Breaking large assignments into smaller steps

An IEP (Individualized Education Program) provides a higher level of support. It’s used when a disability significantly impacts learning, and the student needs specialized instruction—not just accommodations, but direct teaching of skills.

An IEP may include:

• Reading or math intervention

• Speech or occupational therapy

• Behavioral support

• Individual learning goals

Here is a simple way to differentiate the two:

504 Plan → accommodations for learning
IEP → specialized instruction

Both are designed to help students succeed in school.

How ADHD and Executive Function Challenges Fit Into School Support Plans

ADHD is recognized as a disability under federal education law, which means many students qualify for support at school.

For many children with ADHD and Executive Function challenges, a 504 Plan is enough. These plans often include supports that help with attention, organization, time awareness, and managing tasks throughout the school day.

Some children, however, struggle more significantly—not because they aren’t capable, but because the demands of learning exceed their current skill level. In those cases, they may qualify for an IEP, which provides more structured instruction and support to help build those skills over time.

It’s also common for ADHD to occur alongside learning differences or anxiety, which can influence the type of support a child needs.

This is why it is so important to get a proper diagnosis for your child when they need one—and to work with a provider who is knowledgeable about ADHD and Executive Function. Exactly what support the school will provide should be discussed with you in a meeting with the school support team, or SST.

Five Helpful Questions to Ask in a School Meeting

School meetings can feel overwhelming. I recommend taking another person to the meeting with you—it could be a spouse, friend, family member, or someone you trust to take notes for you. These meetings can be emotional as a parent, and you are getting a lot of information. It’s a great idea to have someone else there with you to support you.

Stay calm and remember you want to work with the school to help your child. Asking a few key questions can help keep the conversation focused on your child.

1. Where is my child struggling the most during the school day?
   Understanding when challenges occur helps the team target the right supports.

2. What will the support actually look like in the classroom?
   Specific strategies are more helpful than general ideas.

3. How will we know if the plan is working?
   Progress should be monitored so adjustments can be made if needed.

4. What can we do at home to support these strategies?
   When parents and teachers work together, children benefit—and consistency across settings makes a meaningful difference.

5. Who should I contact if concerns come up?
   Knowing the best point of contact makes communication easier.

A Calm and Connected Approach to Advocacy

Advocating for your child at school can feel emotional at times. When your child is struggling, it’s natural to want quick solutions.

But one of the most powerful things parents can bring into the process is the same mindset that helps at home: calm, connection, and collaboration.

For children with ADHD and Executive Function challenges, support is most effective when adults share a common understanding of how the brain works—and respond in ways that build skills over time, not just manage behavior in the moment.

You don’t have to navigate the system perfectly. Advocacy simply means staying curious, asking questions, and continuing to work with your child’s school to find the supports that help them succeed.

And that steady presence from you is one of the most powerful supports your child can have.

A plan alone doesn’t create change.

What matters most is how that plan is understood and implemented—by teachers, by parents, and by the adults supporting your child day to day.

When everyone is working from the same understanding of ADHD and Executive Function, support becomes more consistent, more effective, and far less frustrating for everyone involved.

If you’re trying to navigate this with your child and want clearer guidance on what actually helps, you can learn more about parent coaching and support here: https://ptscoaching.com/parents/

If you’d like to go deeper, my books explore these ideas in more detail:
8 Keys to Parenting Kids & Teens with ADHD and ADHD, Executive Function, & Behavioral Challenges in the Classroom.

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You may come across well-meaning suggestions—or even presentations—that frame caffeine as a natural, low-risk alternative to stimulant medications for ADHD. One ADDitude article states it clearly: “Caffeine is not a good alternative to ADHD medication.” They go on to explain that ADHD stimulants provide reliable, steady symptom management, while caffeine’s punch is unpredictable.

Here’s why this matters—and why parents don’t need to fear ADHD meds when used thoughtfully and appropriately.

Stimulants vs Caffeine: What Makes the Difference?

Stimulant medications like methylphenidate or amphetamines are designed to target underactive brain systems involving dopamine and norepinephrine. These neurotransmitters play key roles in focus, alertness, and sustained attention. When prescribed properly, stimulants help regulate brain function—they don’t “boost” kids in the way caffeine might. They bring things into balance.

Caffeine, on the other hand, is a general central nervous system stimulant. It primarily blocks adenosine receptors, which can increase alertness—but it doesn’t work in the same targeted way. Its effects are unpredictable, short-lived, and come with side effects like jitteriness, disrupted sleep, and sometimes even anxiety or behavioral worsening in kids.

As the ADDitude article notes, stimulant medications deliver reliable, therapeutic results. Caffeine doesn’t.

Pills Don’t Teach, and Neither Does Caffeine

This is so important to remember: neither medication nor caffeine teaches skills. Even when medication is helpful, it simply opens a window—making it more possible for someone to build the skills they need to succeed.

Medication doesn’t replace the need for structure, coaching, clear expectations, or emotional support. It doesn’t teach time management, planning, or impulse control. That work still needs to be done.

And caffeine certainly won’t do that work either.

This is where parent education and coaching play a crucial role. Understanding your child’s brain and learning how to support them effectively—without shame or power struggles—is the foundation for long-term success. When parents have the tools to create calm, reduce conflict, and teach real-life executive function skills, everything changes.

That’s the heart of what I teach in our Calm and Connected Parent Workshop and through 1-on-1 Parent Coaching. It’s not about being perfect—it’s about learning how to respond instead of react, how to guide instead of control, and how to build connection while setting boundaries that stick.

ADHD Parenting Support

Medication may be one tool in the toolbox. However, coaching equips you with the skills to utilize that toolbox with clarity, confidence, and compassion.

Reframing the Narrative on Medication

I know that for many families, the idea of medication can feel loaded. There’s stigma, fear, and concern about dependency. But when we understand what stimulant medications actually do, the conversation shifts.

We’re not talking about suppressing a child’s personality or turning them into a zombie. We’re talking about helping their brain function in a way that enables them to engage with learning, relationships, and life more effectively.

When medication is used appropriately, it can be a powerful tool—not a magic fix, but a meaningful support.

Bottom Line: Clear the Misconceptions

Caffeine may feel like an easy alternative, but it’s not reliable, not therapeutic, and not safe in the long term for children and teens. It can interfere with sleep, heighten anxiety, and mask the very symptoms that need to be addressed.

Medication, when needed and monitored, can help bring balance. But just as important is the reminder that pills don’t teach skills—and caffeine won’t either.

If you’re a parent, educator, or professional trying to support a child with ADHD, it’s worth understanding what’s really behind these tools and strategies. When we do, we can make clearer, more confident choices for our kids and ourselves.

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My work is dedicated to helping families reduce daily stress, understand what’s really getting in the way, and build calmer, more connected relationships that support growth over time. Give yourself grace, learn what you need, and get the support you deserve.

I can’t tell you how many times a parent has leaned in and said, quietly, “We’re thinking about medication… but I don’t know how to explain it to my child.”

Sometimes the child is six.
Sometimes twelve.
Sometimes sixteen and already frustrated with themselves.

And underneath all the clinical language - ADHD, executive function, impulsivity - there’s usually something much more personal going on.

Parents are often wrestling not just with the medication, but with what it means.

Does this mean I failed?
Am I giving up too soon?
Will they need this forever?
What will people think?

Medication decisions are rarely casual.

They are rarely reckless. They are usually made after months - sometimes years - of trying to help a child who is trying hard and still struggling.

It’s important to say this clearly:
ADHD is a neurobiological condition. Parenting does not cause it.
But how we talk about it absolutely shapes how a child understands themselves.

And that’s where this conversation really begins.

Start with Understanding - Not Medication

Before you ever talk about a pill, talk about the brain.

ADHD is not a character flaw. It’s not laziness. It’s not a lack of effort. It’s one way a brain can be wired.

It affects how someone manages attention, energy, emotions, and self-control. And while it can create real challenges, it often comes with strengths too - creativity, intensity, curiosity, big-picture thinking.

It can help to normalize this early. Many athletes, artists, entrepreneurs, and leaders have ADHD. Not because ADHD makes someone extraordinary - but because different brains bring different strengths. If it feels helpful, you might mention someone your child already knows from sports, music, or popular culture who has spoken openly about having ADHD.

The goal isn’t comparison.
The goal is identity without shame.

Then adjust the language to your child’s age and developmental stage.

For younger children, it might sound like this:

“Everyone’s brain works in its own special way. Yours is really good at coming up with ideas and noticing lots of things at once. Sometimes, though, your brain makes it harder to sit still or finish what you start. That’s called ADHD - it’s just one way that brains can be wired.”

Young children need reassurance. They need to hear clearly that ADHD explains behavior - it does not define their worth.

For middle schoolers:

“ADHD is about how your brain handles focus, emotions, and self-control. It’s not about being lazy or not trying. It’s wiring.”

By this age, many kids already know that something feels harder for them. They’ve noticed the unfinished work, the reminders, the frustration. Naming it reduces shame. It replaces “What’s wrong with me?” with “Oh. That’s why.”

For teens:

“You’ve probably noticed certain things feel harder - starting tasks, staying organized, managing frustration. ADHD helps explain those patterns. It doesn’t define you. It helps us understand how your brain works.”

Teens benefit from transparency. They don’t need sugarcoating. They need honesty, clarity, and respect. When we frame ADHD as information rather than indictment, we preserve both dignity and trust.

Once your child understands that ADHD is about how their brain works - not who they are - you can begin talking about support.

Medication is part of that conversation. But it should come after understanding, not before it.

If ADHD explains certain patterns, the next question becomes:
What helps?

That’s where medication fits in - not as a fix, not as a shortcut, and not as a last resort born of frustration - but as one possible tool in the toolbox.

Then Talk About Medication - As a Tool

When you introduce medication, keep the language simple and grounded.

Medication can help reduce some of the friction your child experiences - making it easier to focus, pause, or manage energy. It doesn’t change who they are. It supports systems that are working harder.

For younger kids:

“This medicine helps your brain’s brakes work better when you need to slow down.”
Or, “It helps your brain’s spotlight shine on what you want to focus on.”

For older kids:

“This medicine helps the part of your brain that manages focus and impulse control work more smoothly.”

For teens:

“Medication can reduce some of the friction your brain feels when trying to focus or manage energy. It doesn’t change who you are. It supports the systems that are working harder.”

The glasses analogy works for many kids. Glasses don’t change who you are. They help you see more clearly. Medication can help the brain regulate more effectively.

Medication is one tool among many.
It is not the plan.
It does not teach skills.
It creates conditions that make skill-building more possible.

Make It Collaborative

This is where trust is built.

Children are often much more aware of their challenges than adults give them credit for. They may not always have the language for it, but they feel it.

Instead of presenting medication as something being done to them, invite them into the process.

“You might notice it’s easier to focus.”
“You might notice something you don’t like.”
“We want to know.”

We want to know - because we really care about you and your experience.

For younger children, collaboration can be very simple. A short daily check-in:

• Did today feel easier, the same, or harder?

• Did your body feel calm or buzzy?

For middle schoolers and teens, you can go a bit deeper:

• How was your focus today?

• How was your mood?

• Did you feel like yourself?

• Anything uncomfortable?

If you’d like a simple medication reflection log for both parents and kids, email me (Cindy@PTScoaching.com), and I’ll send it to you. These tools help families track patterns thoughtfully and bring clearer information back to their prescribing physician.

Helping a child track their own experience builds something much bigger than data. It builds self-awareness. And over time, that becomes self-advocacy.

And one more important piece:
Work closely with the prescribing physician. If something feels off, don’t adjust doses on your own. Bring your observations. Bring your child’s feedback. Medication management works best when it’s collaborative and monitored.

What About “Will They Be on It Forever?”

This question comes up all the time.

The honest answer is: not necessarily.

Medication decisions can be revisited. Doses change. Needs change. Some children use medication for a period of time. Some longer. Some choose to stop. Some restart later.

Some adults find medication helpful as well - either consistently or during seasons when demands are higher, or for specific tasks that require sustained focus. Others choose different supports. There isn’t one path that fits everyone.

The goal is not permanence.
The goal is support.

You are not signing a lifetime contract. You are making the best decision you can with the information you have right now.

Keep the Conversation Going

This should not be one big talk.

It’s small check-ins.

“How did today feel?”
“Anything easier?”
“Anything harder?”

And underneath it all, the message your child needs to hear is this:

You are not bad.
You are not broken.
We are learning how your brain works.
And we are in this together.

Medication is a complex issue. But it doesn’t have to be a scary one.

When approached thoughtfully - with education, collaboration, and a strong parent-child relationship - it becomes what it was always meant to be:

One tool.
Used wisely.
In the service of helping your child grow into who they already are.

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I’m excited to share that my newest article has just been published in Psychotherapy Networker, a publication I’ve long respected for the thoughtful conversations it brings to the mental health field.

For many years, conversations about ADHD have focused primarily on symptoms, medication, and behavioral strategies. Those tools can absolutely be helpful. But they don’t always capture the full experience of living with ADHD- especially for children and families navigating it every day.

In my work with parents, educators, and clinicians, I often see a gap between how ADHD is commonly treated and what children and families actually need.

Too often, we focus on managing behavior without fully understanding the developmental skills underneath it- things like emotional regulation, executive function, motivation, and the role relationships play in helping those skills grow. When those pieces are missing from the conversation, even well-intentioned treatment can fall short.

This article explores what might change if we widened the lens.

Psychotherapy Networker has also generously offered my readers a FREE 60-day subscription to the Magazine, which gives access to their full archive of articles and clinical conversations.

If you work with families, teach, or are simply interested in the evolving understanding of ADHD and neurodiversity, their publication is well worth exploring.

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