December 4, 2025 • 52 mins
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In this episode, Jon answers a parent’s question about neurodivergence and walks through how to think about kids who are more intense, more sensitive, or more easily overwhelmed. He breaks down what neurodivergence actually means, why some kids struggle more with regulation, and what parents can do to support them.
Key Topics Covered
• Why Some Kids Are More Intense
He breaks down how sensitive nervous systems work, why some kids go from calm to meltdown quickly, and why this isn’t a discipline issue.
• The Role of Executive Functioning
Jon describes how executive functioning skills (flexibility, organization, handling transitions) often lag behind in neurodivergent kids — and why inconsistency is normal.
• What Parents Can Actually Do
Practical suggestions from the episode, including:
- Lowering stimulation
- Creating predictable routines
- Giving kids more processing time
- Staying regulated yourself so you can co-regulate with them
• When to Consider an Evaluation
Jon briefly discusses how to know when an assessment might be helpful, and when it’s simply a matter of understanding your child’s wiring.
Episode Takeaway
Some kids aren’t trying to be difficult — their brain is working harder to manage everyday challenges. When parents understand this, they can respond with support instead of frustration.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jon @WholeParent (00:00):
Hello and welcome to an episode of the
Whole Parent podcast.
My name is John.
I'm at whole parent on all ofthe social medias.
And today on the podcast, wewill be answering three
questions that I have gottenfrom people who have emailed or
DM'd in their questions aboutparenting.
For those who don't know, I amon social media.
(00:21):
That's where I get the at wholeparent thing.
And I get lots and lots ofquestions from people, from
parents, I should say, probablyjust like you, if you're
listening to this episode.
And today we are kind of takinga different approach.
We've been talking aboutparenting struggles in the last
couple of weeks related tosiblings.
(00:42):
And oh man, what did we alreadytalk about two weeks ago?
You can see how the holidayseason is just zapping all of my
mental energy here.
I don't even remember right now,off the top of my head.
Should I look it up?
I probably should, right?
We talked two weeks ago aboutmornings, right?
Morning routines and how chaoticthey can be and how we can do
(01:04):
things a little bit more simply.
But this morning I said we'regonna do this morning, this
afternoon, whenever you'relistening to it, tonight,
whenever you're listening, we'retalking about something a little
bit different.
We are going into depth on kidswho the either the person who is
emailed in has identified, ormaybe I am just calling a form
(01:27):
of neurodivergence.
And so neurodivergence,parenting neurodivergent kids is
a hot topic.
It's obviously something that alot of people want to talk about
because an increasing number ofkids every year are diagnosed
with ASD, ADHD, or some otherversion of neurodivergence, some
(01:49):
other three-letter orfour-letter designation.
And I want to start by sayingthat in this episode, a little
bit of a caveat.
I am not a psychologist, I haveno ability to diagnose any
neurodivergence.
But the reason why I feelcompelled to talk about this is
number one, most people who havea neurodivergent kid are not
(02:11):
experts.
They are not psychologists, theyare not psychiatrists, they have
no formal training, and yet theystill have a kid who requires
excellent parenting.
And so the other reason I wantto talk about this today is
because my book, Punishment FreeParenting, which I don't plug a
lot on the podcast.
I should probably plug more.
My publisher, I'm sure, wishesthat I talked about it more.
(02:34):
My book, kind of surprisingly,was written to neurotypical
kids, or written to the parentsof neurotypical kids, I should
say.
It had no informationspecifically geared towards kids
with ADHD or ASD or anythingelse, for that matter.
But in the year since it's comeout, almost a year since it's
come out, 10 months, what'shappened is we've had more and
(02:57):
more practitioners andclinicians telling me that they
are using my book specificallywith kids who have sensitive
nervous systems, whether that'sASD or ADHD, or who have had a
traumatic experience, PTSD orCPTSD.
And as a result, nowincreasingly punishment for
(03:18):
reparenting is a book that isused by people in that
community.
And so I feel like a lot of myparenting advice is specifically
geared in ways that wasn'tintentionally going to help
those members of that community.
I am myself ADHD, and perhapsthat's part of it, is that I'm
parenting in line with my ownperspective.
(03:39):
I don't know if my kids haveneurodivergence.
Some of them act like it.
Some of them have certain thingsthat indicate to me that they
may be, but none of them havebeen diagnosed.
But I do come in contact withmany, many parents of
neurodivergent kids.
They're in my membership, andagain, they read my book, and
they found a lot of the helpfuland a lot of the information in
(04:00):
that, in those different placesto be helpful.
I also did a previous podcastepisode in the old format of the
podcast where I did deep diveswith different experts.
On ADHD, I brought in my friendDr.
Josh, who is a psychologist, totalk about parenting strategies
for kids with ADHD and what it'slike to parent a kid with ADHD.
And that is one of my mostdownloaded episodes ever.
(04:21):
In fact, it may be my mostdownloaded episode ever.
And I've had a lot of positivefeedback.
So this is kind of a 2.0 onthat.
We're not only talking aboutADHD today, we're talking about
neurodivergence of all kinds.
For those who are not watchingthis in a video form, yes, I am
back out on the porch.
Yes, it is still 40 degrees outhere.
It has not warmed up at allsince the last time I recorded a
(04:43):
podcast.
But I got a little heating padfor my feet.
I got a what I call a pizzawarmer above my head, one of
these infrared silent warmersthat gets you skin deep warm.
I got a little like lightsweatshirt on, and I feel pretty
good.
Mostly just excited and pumpedto be talking about parenting
today, as I always am.
(05:03):
It warms me right up.
So without further ado, I wantto jump into our first question
messaged in.
And this one comes from Rachel.
Rachel says, Hey John, my Ithink my five-year-old is
neurodivergent.
Mornings feel like a sensoryavalanche for him.
The lights, the clothes, thenoise, all of it.
By 7:30 a.m., he's alreadyoverwhelmed.
(05:24):
By 8 a.m., he's melting downwhile I'm trying to get everyone
out the door.
I don't want to treat him likehe's a quote, problem to be
solved.
Wow, Rachel, I love that.
But I also don't know how tosupport him when his environment
seems to attack him the secondthat he wakes up.
How do I make my mornings lessof a battlefield for his nervous
system and mine?
I'm glad that you ended it withand mine there, because one of
(05:47):
the first things that I want totell parents of neurodivergent
kids, whether your child ispotentially autistic, as you
said, or you just saidneurodivergent.
I'm kind of inferring autismhere, or ADHD.
No, you know what?
I shouldn't even say that.
Could be ASD, could be ADHD,could be none of the above,
could just be a highly sensitivekid, could be a kid with sensory
(06:07):
processing issues, could be alot of different things, right?
The first thing that I love thatyou said is that you need to
regulate your own nervoussystem.
And that's basically where Iwould want to begin any
conversation.
And that's by just starting bysaying, yeah, this is
overwhelming to parent kids likethis.
When I did a workshop on uhADHD, parenting ADHD and ASD
(06:29):
kids, that just called themstrong-willed kids, but it was
in the context of a group thatmeets of very neurodivergent
kids.
Uh, when I talked to that parentpopulation live, it was probably
six or eight months ago, I hadthis really amazing experience
of being able to see in realtime as I was kind of offering
(06:50):
them the principles that werethat are in punishment free
parenting, how they were kind ofembattled by their experience of
raising kids that are just alot.
They are challenging to parent,they require excellent
parenting.
And that experience reallyshaped me more than one-on-one
relationships with parents, morethan uh group coaching
environments and things likethat, where I have a group of
(07:11):
people.
When the group of people wasspecifically all parents of kids
who really, really struggledbecause they had opted to come
to an event like this, it wasvery clear to me how much taking
care of the parents was as muchas as important in the process
as taking care of the kids.
And so I want just to identifyhere first and foremost that I
(07:32):
think that you're probably doinga great job already.
Even the idea that your kid isnot a problem to solve gives me
the evidence to support theconclusion that you're probably
doing a pretty great jobalready, and that we do need to
come up with some tools andtactics and tricks, but that I
want to start with that.
The second piece here isunderstanding that this is not a
(07:52):
problem with your kid.
And I want to say that over andover because as we increasingly
see discussions ofneurodivergence, especially
autism, in the public square,let's say, when we have
different governmental leadersgetting up and speaking, some
more informed or less informedthan others, we often cast these
(08:14):
neurodivergences, these ways inwhich their neurology, their
brain, diverts from what isconsidered the typical or the
norm.
We view that as some sort ofproblem to be fixed or solved,
or some sort of, you know,disease that we need to cure or
prevent.
Instead of saying that probablymost of these kids have brains
(08:38):
that would do just fine if theworld was set up for those types
of brains.
And so the reason why I still douse the term neurotypical, even
though a lot of people havemoved away and said, well,
nobody's really neurotypical,the reason why I still will use
the term neurotypical is becauseI think it identifies a very key
sociological and culturalconstruct that we uh have here,
(09:02):
whether no matter where you are,but especially where I am in the
United States.
And that key construct is thatthe world is set up for
neurotypical people.
So wherever you fall within theneurotypical spectrum, that's uh
maybe a term that you haven'theard in the past, um, but
wherever you fall within thatneurotypical spectrum, if you
identify or if you believe or ifyou exhibit traits associated
(09:27):
with neurotypicalness, whatreally you're saying is that the
world is built for the type ofbrain that you have.
Now, obviously, that means thatthe world is not built for the
type of brains that kids who areneurodivergent have.
And I'll add adults, because oneof the important things to
recognize is that as much as wedon't know all of the causes of
(09:49):
neurodivergence, we know thatthe largest cause or the most
significant factor inneurodivergence is not an
environmental factor, it'sgenetics.
And so, as again, as people whomay or may not be
evidence-driven continue toforward this theory that there's
something in the water orthere's something in the
medication that we give pregnantwomen that is causing some kids
(10:12):
or an increased population ofkids to be neurodivergent, what
we know, the researchers whoactually study this stuff, is
that at least a significantfactor is that neurodivergent
people are getting married andhaving babies and
neurodivergence, especiallyADHD, is in some form or fashion
genetic.
And so understanding that forthis, everything I'm seeing in
(10:36):
this episode, many of theparents who are listening, maybe
were diagnosed, maybe were not.
It kind of depends on how oldyou are, where you lived in the
country, uh, whether you're aman or a woman.
Women tend to be far lessdiagnosed, uh, especially
historically, but even today,than men, if with either of
these things, you, or with anyform of neurodivergence, what
(10:57):
you're probably experiencingwith your kid often feels to
many parents very familiarbecause they may have a less
severe or a way of coping withthe experience of having kids.
And I think this is kind of ablessing, nature's blessing
here, or if you believe in Godor the universe or whatever you
believe in, there's kind of ablessing here in that, you know,
(11:19):
I think one of the mostcompelling things that we can do
for our kids is to learn toempathize and perspective take.
I very famously, Fred Rogers,who I quote probably more than
anyone else, and I quote thisquote more than any other quote,
he said, when asked, What is thenumber one things parents can do
to become better parents?
He said, to remember what it waslike to be a child.
And so, in many ways,neurodivergent parents are the
(11:39):
perfect people, more importantthan being a psychologist or a
psychiatrist or a parentingauthor or anything.
Um, the best person to parent aneurodivergent child is a
neurodivergent parent becausethey know what it is to
experience the world in thatway.
And sometimes that can come offin maladaptive ways, where the
child, the parent says to thechild, you know, just suck it
up, deal with it.
I had to deal with it.
(12:00):
But it can also be a veryadaptive experience of being
able to deeply empathize withthe experience that your child
is having.
And so, all this to say toRachel, it may be that your
nervous system is overwhelmedbecause anyone's nervous system
would be overwhelmed if you hada kid who was melting down and
overwhelmed by 8 a.m.
every single morning.
It may also be for you that it'sextra over stimulating because
(12:24):
neurodivergence is in some waypart of your story as well.
Now, it's funny that I began theepisode by saying that I didn't
remember what our episode twoweeks ago was about, or two
episodes ago it was about, Ishould say.
I don't always know when theseare going to exactly come out.
But the thing that I shouldbegin with is that if the
problem is with mornings, one ofthe key things that we can do
(12:49):
with neurodivergent kids whostruggle with executive
functioning and task managementoften, and all will get stuck on
things or get hyperfixated ornot be able to do items in a
series and things like that, isto create a very brutally
predictable morning routine.
So you can go back and listen tothat episode.
I'm not going to rehasheverything I said there.
But it is important to rememberthat the reason why kids need
(13:09):
routines, why they thrive withinroutines so to such a better
extent than even adults do isbecause they struggle to predict
the future.
Well, this is more true withkids who struggle with executive
functioning, and even more trueof kids with ASD, ADHD, et
cetera, when the plans thensubsequently change.
And so if you're having aproblem every morning, then I
(13:32):
would say you probably need abetter morning routine.
And I by better, I don't meanlike you have to be some sort of
wizard and you have to like haveeverything ready all the time,
but rather that it's very, verybrutally predictable to kids.
Kids who are neurodivergent tendto thrive in environments that
are structured with routines.
And you might be saying toyourself, but John, all kids
thrive in those environments.
That's right.
(13:52):
In many ways, everything I'mgoing to say in this episode is
also true of neurotypical kids.
In many ways, everything I'msaying in this episode can be
applied to neurotypical kids.
And if we raise them in the sameway that we raise ADHD kids,
they are AD ASD kids, they'dprobably do better than if we
just raise them with a lesscaring way.
This is why I say kids who areneurodivergent just require
(14:13):
excellent parenting, right?
I'm gonna say that again.
Kids who are neurodivergent justrequire excellent parenting.
It is not that kids who are notneurodivergent would totally
fail or would totally fail if wegave them this type of
parenting.
In fact, they would probably dobetter too.
It's just that they can usuallytolerate worse parenting.
And so what's great parentingabout the morning?
(14:33):
Well, as I talk about in mybook, it's making sure that your
kids are fed when they'reactually hungry.
A lot of us don't feed our kidsenough in the morning, and I'm
not saying breakfast is the mostimportant meal of the day or
some other, you know, kind ofplacation here, but or you know,
uh, I don't want to sayplacation, that's probably the
wrong word.
Some other sort of, you know,just turn a phrase or cliche.
(14:55):
It's that kids who are hungryare harder to parent.
It may be that bedtime needs tobe earlier the night before.
Why?
Because if a kid is not wellrested and we know that kids who
are neurodivergent need just asmuch or more sleep than their
neurotypical counterparts, thenthey're going to be more
dysregulated in the morning aswell.
It may be that yourneurodivergent kid right now is
(15:16):
using a bunch of screens as soonas they wake up because maybe
they're an early riser, andthat's causing them to have this
huge dopamine letdown before theday even starts.
And so now the lights, theclothes, the noise show up and
they're hungry or they're tiredor they've, you know, had all
these high dopamine activities,or maybe they're just eating
(15:36):
sugar every morning and that'sall they're eating.
And I'm not trying to demonizebreakfast cereal or anything
like that, but justunderstanding that as all of
these things compound in aneurodivergent child, then it
becomes intolerable to have theitchy clothes, the noise, and
all of it.
So, what does this look like?
Number one, I would say it mightlook like turning down the
lights.
It might look like having lessscratchy clothes, it might look
(15:59):
like having a quieter morningroutine to try and play
whack-a-mole with thoseindividual triggers for your
child.
But it might also be that theirresilience tank is already so
depleted by the fact that theydon't know what's coming next.
The morning routine's notconsistent, they don't know how
to navigate all of thesedifferent things, being hungry,
being tired, being overwhelmedor overstimulated, that when all
(16:21):
of those things come alltogether, then mornings feel
super chaotic.
And it may be that if you tooksome time to reset and actually
set down a morning routine, itmight be a lot easier for them
to manage the lights and theclothes and the noise, even, you
know, and so we can attack thistwo prongs from both sides.
We can start to remove some ofthe triggers while also removing
(16:45):
some of those things that makeour kids inherently less
resilient.
And again, this goes for notneuro, only neurotypical kids.
You said, hey, look, I think myfive-year-old is neurodivergent.
I would say, whether your childis neurodivergent or not, this
is all good advice.
At least in this case, uh, thisis good advice because this is
what how kids tend to thrive.
So that's what I would do firstand foremost.
(17:07):
The next thing that I would dois I would work on a couple
emotional regulation games.
And this is probably a good timeto plug the emotional regulation
game guide that I have.
Emotional regulation games forneurodivergent kids can be
really, really regulatingforces.
I think that these workespecially well with ADHD kids,
at least in my experience,parents of ADHD kids get a ton
(17:28):
out of the emotional regulationgame guide.
I have a full emotionalregulation game guide that is
like 25 games.
It's actually been recentlyupdated.
I don't even know if by the timethis episode airs, the new one
will be up.
The old one's great too.
That's about 19 bucks.
I also have a free one with fivegames.
And I'm excited to also announcethat I have a children's book
(17:48):
coming out, my wife illustratedin April, at the end of April,
that is just emotionalregulation games as well in the
format of a picture book.
And so you can play these withyour kids.
But having those emotionalregulation games, whether you
get them from me or whether youmake them up on your own, those
can be helpful tools becauseeventually something is going to
go off the rails, right?
(18:09):
Eventually something is notgoing to go well, and you are
going to have to help your kidto co-regulate.
And the way to do that with aneurodivergent kid is often to
play an emotional regulationgame, where with a neurotypical
kid, you might be able toregulate them by just saying,
okay, slow down, take somebreaths.
Probably not going to work witha kid who's already kind of at a
10 over the over stimulation ofthe environment.
(18:31):
And so that's kind of mythree-pronged approach to this
one, Rachel.
It'd be number one, take care ofyourself.
Oh, I didn't even say that one.
Let me let me let me pause for amoment to say that one.
What I was saying at thebeginning when I all got
started, part of the reason thejoy of this being unscripted and
not written out is thatsometimes I'm going to, it's
going to feel very natural.
(18:52):
And sometimes feeling natural isgoing to be that I get
distracted and I forget my firstpoint.
My first point was supposed tobe that you need to take
impeccable care of yourself,Rachel.
It means that you need to beregulated yourself.
You need to make sure thatyou've eaten and been properly
caffeinated or uncaffeinated, ifthat works for you.
You need to make sure that youand your nervous system are
getting the help that you needand getting the sleep that you
(19:15):
need.
Because if you're trying toparent a neurodivergent kid from
a depleted state, I promise you,it's it's going to be so much
harder.
And those kids can really pickup when we're not in a good
place and they're gonna mirrorthe heck out of that.
And so step one is always totake impeccable care of
yourself.
And anytime that you're doingsomething that's self-care
related, as the parent of aneurodivergent kid, I want you
(19:37):
to think of it as doing it atleast in part for them.
You are taking care of yourselffor them.
It makes it a lot easier toprioritize that extra exercise
or prioritize that extra sleepin the beginning of the night or
going to bed earlier orprioritize, you know, doing
whatever you need to do,journaling, whatever, to make
you feel good.
Prioritizing, taking time awayfrom your kids, to have
(20:00):
relationships outside of yourkids, uh, being with your
partner, being intimate withyour partner, whatever that
looks like for you, all of thoseself-care needs, those should
not be things that you areselfishly doing in spite of your
kids and what they need fromyou.
When you have a neurodivergentkid, especially, I mean, this is
true for all parents, butespecially parents of
neurodivergent kids who requireso much more often.
(20:21):
Taking impeccable care ofyourself is one of the most
giving and loving things thatyou can do for that child.
So that's step one, takeimpeccable care of yourself.
Step two is to make apredictable morning routine that
that is working with thosethings, not only the seen
triggers, the lights, theclothes, the noise, but also the
unseen triggers, the hunger, theexhaustion, the dopamine
(20:44):
letdown, whatever that lookslike.
And then last but not least,it's I don't even remember where
I was going with this.
(22:28):
Oh, yeah.
It's understanding that for themyou need to work within the
nervous system response andcreate these predictable
routines that are gonna workwith them.
I I feel like I just said threethings, but then I was waiting
for a third thing.
Oh man.
As you can tell, I'm it's latein the day for me now.
(22:49):
I'm already starting to lose mygrip.
It's okay.
I'm gonna take a quick realbreak here, and then we're gonna
get back to caller number two orquestion number two.
My life my wife always liststhese as caller questions.
And I'm like, why are we sayingthey're callers?
They're always emails.
Nobody's leaving a message withthese things.
Although, if they did, man, Icould just play their message.
(23:10):
That would be fun.
Okay, take a quick break.
We'll get to number two withCarlton.
All right.
Carlton says, Hey John, myseven-year-old is ADHD.
I'm gonna assume, Carlton, thatyou have a diagnosis, but even
(23:31):
if you don't, that's okay.
The school has become a dailyspiral for him.
Uh, okay, we're talking aboutschool.
Okay.
His teacher says that he'sbright and curious, not
surprised.
And but I'm getting calls homealmost every day.
He's getting in trouble, missinginstruction, or just generally
melting down.
By the time he gets home, he'sso spent that every little tiny
thing sets him off.
(23:52):
The whole evening becomesrecovery mode.
How do I support him in schoolso it doesn't drain every bit of
his resilience by 3 p.m.?
Carlton, man, this is a reallyhard question to answer.
Maybe I should have filteredthis one and not put it up on
the podcast or thought about itfor longer before I did this.
I'm probably going to give ananswer that most people are not
(24:12):
going to like.
But I hope, Carlton, that you atleast can accept it for what it
is.
When I finished writingPunishment Free Parenting, I
started to think after theprocess of like, you know, doing
all of the marketing for it andpromotions for it, which I'm
kind of actually bummed that Ididn't get to do more promotion
for it.
I felt like my publisher droppedthe ball on that a little bit.
(24:35):
But when I finished it, Istarted thinking about like did
was this an enjoyable experiencefor me?
And immediately I concluded,yeah, I love writing books.
It's like one of my favoritethings to do.
It was a very easy yes of do Iwant to write another book?
The challenge became do I wantto write another book with this
publisher?
And do I want another writeanother book?
(24:56):
What do I want my next book tobe about?
I mean, obviously I wrote thispunishment free parenting.
That's about general parentingwisdom.
It was a great first book basedon the platform, based on the
podcast, based on all that.
But the question was, what am Igoing to write about next?
And a couple things popped upfor me.
Could talk aboutneurodivergence, could talk
about siblings, could talk abouteducation.
(25:17):
And initially, I landed onwriting a book about education.
And the reason why I wanted towrite a book about education is
in many ways, everything that Ihad talked about in punishment
free parenting, this idea thatwe actually know a better way to
parent, and that most people whoare experts in parenting know
this better way to parent, butit's not wild, widely available
(25:40):
to the average person who has akid.
A lot of the same themes aretrue within education.
Most of the people who areleading educational reform
efforts, who are experts ineducation, they know what some
of the problems are that wehave, and yet they those
problems are not being addressedby the average teacher or by the
average principal or schooldistrict.
(26:03):
And so I spent a long timeresearching the history of
education, probably a hundredhours or more, definitely more
than a hundred hours, actually,now that I think about it,
prepping and writing theproposal for this education
book.
And before I even sent theproposal in, in the process of
editing that proposal, after I'dwritten a chapter of the book
and written the outline of thebook and all this other stuff, I
(26:24):
was asked a question by myagent.
And she basically was like,okay, so what do you want people
to actually do?
What's the good news here?
And I started to think, youknow, that is a good question.
I don't want to just, you know,issue a bunch of problems and
maybe even solutions to thoseproblems that parents can't
actually, or or schooladministrators can't actually
(26:45):
impl put into practice.
And so I started to look at howthese reform efforts, the ones
that were widely accepted,things like the the how homework
before the age of you know 12 isbasically pointless and is more
destructive to kids than lettingthem just play freely outside.
Things about grade segregation,right?
(27:07):
Both, and I mean that in avariety of ways, grade
segregation and the idea that wesegregate kids by age, the way
that we segregate kids, and alsothe way that we segregate kids
by what types of grades theyget.
The process that we often calltracking or detracking, where a
kid who's performing at a highlevel gets pushed forward while
a kid who's not gets kind ofheld back.
(27:29):
Even if they are progressingthrough the grade levels, they
might be not progressing asquickly through, let's say,
trigonometry or English.
They're not on the honors trackor the AP track, they're on the
regular track or the remedialtrack.
And so a lot of these thingswere, you know, the necessity of
creativity, the failure of thegrading system in general, the
assessment system, standardizedtesting being a problem, like
(27:52):
all of these things that werewidely accepted.
And one of the things that waswidely accepted was how poor
schools are at handling anddealing with kids who are
neurodivergent.
And as we see more and more kidsbeing diagnosed, again, that may
not be entirely because of theincrease in actual people who
have these conditions, but alsomight just be the understanding
(28:15):
gap of how we're coding things.
And kids who would never havebeen coded as ASD in the past,
who might have received anAsperger's diagnosis or no
diagnosis at all, are now beingcoded as ASD.
Um, that in the process of that,as we're seeing that, we need to
adjust schools accordingly.
And as I've tried to pushforward into this, what became
(28:35):
very clear was that none ofthese systems, there was any
hope in my mind of change.
And that was a really hard thingfor me because I am a deeply
hopeful person.
And I wound up scrapping thebook.
And I tell this long story onthe podcast to say I wound up
scrapping the book because Ihave no faith whatsoever.
(28:56):
Not in teachers.
I have so much faith inteachers.
They're doing an amazing job.
Many of them are implementingthese reforms in their own
classes to the extent to whichit's appropriate.
Not even in administrators, who,by and large, many of them were
trying to make these reforms,not in school boards, but in the
system as a whole.
What I started to receive wasnot back in the form of modern
(29:16):
education research, was not thatanything I was saying was wrong,
but rather that what I wassaying was impractical with the
system that we have set up.
The system that we have set upnow is designed to filter kids,
to, you know, push certain kidsforward, to hold certain kids
back, to basically just bechildcare at an early age while
also simultaneously pushing themthrough these different ranks.
(29:37):
And that to change that systemwould be fundamentally upset the
Apple cart for a population ofpeople who doesn't vote and is
generally not considered in thepublic sphere, and that's
children.
And I was deeply kind of hurt bythat.
And the result, and why I sellthis question this answer in the
midst of this commentary toCarlton here, is because the sh
(30:03):
unshakable reality is that a kidwith ADHD is going to struggle
in these environments.
And there's not a whole lot wecan do about it.
There's not a whole lot we cando when the system is set up for
a person whose brain does notfunction like your
(30:23):
seven-year-old ADHD child, whichis why we tend to medicate.
For some people it works well,for others, it doesn't seem to
work as well.
If you're working with apractitioner, a healthcare
provider, a psychiatrist who isworking with you on that, I I
trust them to make the bestdecision for your tr you and
(30:44):
your child, especially if you'recogn conscious and aware and
working with them.
But basically, all of ourinterventions are around the
fact that kids need to bechanged to fit within the system
rather than the system bechanged to fit the children that
are in it.
And a kid like your son,Carlton, is going to struggle
(31:09):
because the way in which theinstruction is done, again, to
no fault of the teachers, butthe way in which the instruction
is done, the way in which all ofthese different facets interplay
with one another, it's not setup for him.
It's designed to filter him outin many ways.
And if he's able to overcomethat in the long term by coping
(31:32):
strategies, working with you.
Again, medication, if that iswhat works in his case.
But but really, societal factorsbeyond medication is it's it's
medication plus, right?
It's never just medication inisolation.
Um if he's able to overcome, theoutlook for him is extremely
good.
You know, 40% or some crazynumber of all CEOs are ADHD.
(31:56):
So I I'm not worried about hislong-term future, but getting to
that long-term future feels likea daily spiral, which is what
you called it.
I'm not surprised that you getcalls home.
I'm not surprised that they sayhe's bright and curious.
The calls home probably comefrom some form or fashion of not
(32:16):
needing more physical movementwithin class, being bored by
things that he feels that he'salready understood, causing
mischief and trouble becausehe's curious and or not wanting
to move on.
Maybe he wants to continue tostay on a given topic.
And just generally melting downwhen all of those things kind of
coalesce and he's told, no, justlike suck it up, you know, deal
(32:39):
with your emotions and and cope.
And so I'm not surprised that hecomes home and he's exhausted
and the entire evening isrecovery mode.
The truth is, again, I don'tknow if he's on medication or
not, but this is what parents ofkids who are on medication often
report because the medicationwears off by three, four o'clock
in the afternoon.
And now the kid is just likekind of bouncing off the walls.
(33:01):
They're they're going nuts athome.
So the school may receive thebenefits of that, or the child
may receive the benefits of thatin the school environment, but
often not at home.
And so I'm not surprised thatit's recovery mode.
I think that the key withsupporting him is number one, to
set expectations around schooland say, hey, look, I am not
(33:22):
going to be the person who isgoing to place all of my stock
in whether you're a good or abad kid, based on what teachers
or uh the school environmentsays.
You know, I know that you'rebright and curious.
I know that you are thoughtfuland empathetic.
I know who you are, and I'm notgoing to allow that perception
to be shaped by your inabilityto fit into a system that was
(33:43):
not designed for you.
I think that a lot of positivecomes from that.
I think one of the things thatyou can do as recovery mode is
to allow for that, you know, Icall the three things that every
kid needs when they get home.
It's especially true, probably,for your son.
Number one, some food.
They're probably desperatelyhungry.
Number two, they need to move.
(34:03):
And number three, they need tojust not be bossed around.
They need some autonomy.
And so you have the restraintcollapse that comes when we
don't, when they don't havethose things.
But if we can give them thosethings immediately, I think that
that would be better.
Another thing that I would sayis that when we have a kid who
needs that freedom and thatautonomy, which lots of ADHD
(34:23):
kids do, they need it to agreater extent even than their
neurotypical counterparts.
Those kids probably not gonna bea great fit for a bunch of
organized sports immediatelywhen school ends, right?
Because they've already had tostruggle through the concept of
being bossed around all day andnow they get you know dumped
into a soccer team where they'rejust gonna be bossed around some
(34:45):
more.
They need free, kind ofunstructured play, a lot of it.
And I think that that could, insome ways, uh curtail some of
that recovery mode necessity.
But I think the truth is in someways, the way that you're
supporting him in supportinghim, no matter how you support
(35:06):
him, his resilience is to someextent going to be drained by 3
p.m.
Because imagine you were in anenvironment that was just a job
that was absolutely life-suckingto you, you would be drained by
3 p.m.
And I don't know the solutionhere.
Again, I I scrapped the bookbecause I didn't have a real
solution that was practical.
(35:27):
But what I know is that asparents of ADHD kids, we have to
think seriously about what ourexpectations are about that and
to think long term, right?
I like to imagine that my job isto help my kid to be healthy and
happy and relationally strongand mentally strong for their
whole life, not just for theirschooling years.
(35:49):
A lot of parents arehyper-fixated on getting their
kid to 18 with straight A's anda lot of extracurriculars, or
getting their kid graduated fromcollege with all of these
accolades and exciting thingshappening for them and getting
them into their first job.
I don't really care about thatstuff nearly as much as I care
about the emotional resilience,the mental health, the
(36:10):
relational resilience, and allof those things that that by and
large, we don't that's not thestuff that made the the the the
how good your job is and howmuch money you make and and all
that and the opportunities thatare afforded to you.
Not a lot of that has to do withyour life after about 35 years
old.
Just because you started at alower position, or just because
(36:32):
you didn't go to that premiercollege and you went to the
state school or even thecommunity college or whatever, a
lot of that stuff comes out inthe wash when you've been in two
or three jobs.
Nobody is asking anymore whatwhat school you went to when
you're 35 years old.
Nobody's asking anymore whatyour grade was in biology
freshman year, even when you're25 years old.
And so I think much of lookingforward as a seven-year-old for
(36:57):
the next, let's say, 70 years ofhis life or 80 years of his
life, 10 times his life, right?
So if he's only 10% of the waythrough his life or less than
10% of the way through his life,how many of those years is going
to be spent in an environmentlike this?
I mean, another 10, 15 yearsmax?
And then what do you have?
(37:19):
You can either have a kid who'sbeen beat down by the system
that was not designed for him,and he feels like there's
something wrong with him and hefeels like a failure, and the
parents just, you know, kind oflockstep with the educational
institution that said, you willcomply and you will do all this
stuff.
Or, or you can say, you knowwhat, my kid is curious and he's
(37:42):
bright, and I'm gonna focus onthat, and I'm gonna focus on
leading into that, rather thanmy kid gets in trouble every day
or misses instruction or ismentally melting down.
I don't even care about themissed instruction at seven,
right?
They can catch up.
I care about the melting downbecause it tells me that there's
some there's some fundamentalneed not being met.
There's not a lot you can dowith the school system.
(38:03):
You can get an IEP or ordifferent uh educational plans
to try and give him the thestuff that he needs.
Some of that's gonna work, someof it's not.
I think really the main thing isthe mindset shift away from this
is the most important thingever, to maybe it's not.
Maybe there are other thingsthat we can do in life that are
(38:26):
more designed for him, artisticendeavors, athletic endeavors
that are just more suited to hisdesires and thoughts and hopes
and dreams.
You can't really make an ADHDperson do something.
I was actually talking to avery, very famous parenting
creator, probably the biggestparenting creator on the
internet, at least on Instagram.
(38:47):
I was talking to her and she'sADHD, and I was kind of
explaining this to her, and shewas like, Oh my gosh, nobody's
ever said this to me in thisway, and it's so helpful.
I said, You can't really make anADHD person do something.
You can the only way is toinspire them that they want to
do it.
And once you inspire an ADHDperson to want to do something,
(39:07):
there's nothing that they cannotdo.
But doing something that youhate and doing something you
don't want to do, it's about theworst thing that you can force
on a person.
It just will never work.
And so now I'm gonna take alittle break, take a drink, and
then come back with anotheranswer.
(39:28):
I hope that that was not theworst answer ever, Carlton.
Question number three comes fromTanya.
She says, Hi John, mynine-year-old is incredibly
bright.
Another bright kid, notsurprising, but struggles with
emotional regulation in waysthat parents don't seem to
(39:50):
understand.
I'm sorry, in ways that otherparents don't seem to
understand.
People keep telling me thatshe's being dramatic or
manipulative and I should stopgiving in.
I want to help her, but I don'tknow where to start.
I know you're the no punishmentguy, but punishment seems like
the only option sometimes.
Tanya, thank you for thisquestion.
(40:10):
Thank you for the honesty ofsaying, hey, you're the no
punishment guy, but I don't knowif that's gonna work for me.
Um let me begin by saying thatthe way that first thing that I
want to say is that yourinstincts that your child is not
emotionally manipulating youwith their lack of emotional
regulation are correct.
(40:32):
Kids do not manipulate parentswith by melting down.
I'm not saying that kids have nocapacity, especially a nine, to
manipulate their parents.
I'm saying that the way in whicha child melting down is is cast
often as manipulation isnonsense.
It is not manipulation.
She is having a hard time, sheis not giving you a hard time.
(40:54):
And that is likely becauseemotional regulation for her is
what we call a lagging skill.
I've spent the last, I don'tknow, how long of this episode's
even been, 40 minutes orsomething, um, talking about
neurodivergence, and I cannotbelieve it hasn't come up yet,
come up yet, but I'm gonna sayit right now.
The best book on neurodivergenceis actually not billed as a book
(41:15):
on neurodivergence.
It's called The Explosive Child,other than my book, of course.
Mine is the best, but no, justkidding.
Ross Green.
Dr.
Ross Green wrote The ExplosiveChild, I don't know how many
years ago, but it is changed mylife.
It is the second, my secondfavorite parenting book after
The Whole Brain Child.
And honestly, it might be myfirst favorite parenting book.
I gotta get him on the podcast,even if it's in the older
(41:37):
format, because he is brilliant.
And one of the things that hetalks about is that all of these
different diagnoses, and again,he is a doctor, so he can do all
of the diagnosing, unlike me,right?
But he said, you know, whetherit's ASD, ADHD, ODD, PDA, even
Tourette's in certain cases, nomatter how what diagnosis is
(41:57):
leveraged on these kids, reallywhat it comes down to is that
they have a lacking skill or alagging skill.
I think I said lacking, right?
Lacking or a lagging skill inemotional regulation.
In the same way that a childlearns how to walk at 12 months,
roughly.
Although, you know, I thought mydaughter was gonna be able to
walk.
It's she's now 13 months old,she can't.
She's not lagging yet.
(42:18):
But you know, kids can have alagging skill.
I had a one of my kids who waslagging skill of talking.
He needed speech therapy.
Um, some kids have a laggingskill related to emotional
regulation.
They emotionally regulate likethey're many years younger than
they are.
And really, what happens is wejust need to spend more time
continuing to co-regulate withthose kids because it's a
(42:39):
lagging skill.
It's a skill that just takesthem longer to develop.
What happens is parents whodon't see that on a day-to-day
basis, who cannot identify thatthis kid is having a hard time
and they think, oh, they mustjust be manipulating their mom
or their dad, they come in andsay, oh, well, they're just
manipulative because they'renine.
They have to be able to do this.
(43:00):
No, that is not true.
There are kids who havedifferent lagging emo d
developmental skills atdifferent times.
There are kids who can be nighttrained from their diapers at
two years old.
There are other kids who cannotbe because they don't have
antidiuretic hormone that thatis produced in their body
naturally.
And so they can't be nighttrained until they begin to
(43:22):
produce that hormone.
Again, this is a very, nobodywould be going after a kid who
couldn't walk at 14 months andsaying, oh, they're just
manipulating you.
They can totally walk, they'rejust manipulating you.
No, it's obviously a laggingskill.
A person who can't hit abaseball has a lagging skill,
right?
Some of us never develop thatskill very well.
But person, you know, all ofthese things are skills to be
(43:45):
developed.
And emotional regulation is inthe same way a skill.
It is a it is neural pathways inthe brain that have to be uh
built.
Some people build those neuralpathways more easily than
others.
Some people require additionalrepetitions before they really
understand it.
Your daughter is a person whohas a lagging emotional
regulation skills.
You have identified it that way.
(44:05):
Don't believe the hype thatsomehow this is her manipulating
you.
And when you understand thatwhat she's doing is not
misbehavior, it's trying to gether needs met, and she has no
ability to do so because shecan't emotionally regulate on
her own, you realize that you'renot giving in.
I'm not saying that you don'thave to have boundaries, you do.
And that's going to help her.
Boundaries help kids whostruggle with emotional
(44:26):
regulation, no doubt.
But really, the the key here iswhat I said all the way back in
the first one, which is doingthose emotional regulation
exercises and games, even with anine-year-old, because it's
through the repetition of goingthrough the stress cycle, I get
escalated and then I come out ofit, I get escalated, and then my
mom brings me out of it, I getescalated, and then I learn how
(44:46):
to get out of it, that theydevelop those neural pathways so
that they can do it on theirown.
So, why do I think punishment isnot going to be effective?
Because if it was trulymanipulation, punishment might
disincentivize the manipulativebehavior because the child fears
for either their safety or insome way that they're going to
(45:07):
receive harm, social harm, beingseparated, relational harm,
being isolated from theirparent, emotional harm, being
screamed at, physical harm,being spanked, right?
Like all of these are differentways.
Punishment is just differentways of harming a child to make
them not want to do a thing thatyou don't want them to do.
It may stop the manipulation inthe short term, at least with
(45:27):
you, may probably not with otherpeople, but I don't think it's
manipulation.
And so now you're punishing achild because they can't
regulate their emotions.
And punishment, we know, justcauses children to become more
dysregulated.
Because while it may, they maygo internal with a behavior and
they may freeze because they'reafraid of what's going to happen
(45:48):
next, that is not actuallyregulating their emotions.
Right?
If you could scan their brain,they would be no less afraid.
They would be more afraid.
Just the outward manifestationof that fear might not be in
tantruming.
It might be in lock jaw terror.
And so punishment seems like theonly option if what she was
(46:09):
doing was intentionallymanipulative.
And even if she was, it wouldn'tbe the only option.
There are so many betteroptions, including the
deployment of effectiveconsequences and good strategies
of working with.
And I haven't even talked, ohman, I man, I'm out of time in
this episode, but I haven't evenbegun to talk about all of the
collaborative problem solvingstuff, right?
The stuff from the end of mybook, that's the stuff that's
(46:31):
the best with ADHD kids.
Go back and watch the originalepisode on ADHD.
Do you talk about collaborativeproblem solving as like the
fundamental strategy to use?
Way better than punishment.
But I can promise you the reasonthat punishment in this case is
especially harmful and unhelpfulis because what's occurring is
not a manipulation.
And the last thing that I'll sayhere from Dr.
(46:53):
Ross Green's book is that thisis going to look like choosing
your battles.
That there is going to be timeswhen a kid, a kid is melting
down over everything.
You can't try and fix everythingat once.
You have to settle in on one ortwo things, remove the triggers
around those things, and thenfocus on the emotional
regulation games and skillsaround those things, and then
(47:16):
use the successes of thosethings to build on future
things.
You cannot, you know, Romewasn't built in a day, and the
neural pathways that are formedover literal years that it
requires to learn how toeffectively regulate your
emotions are not built in a dayeither.
And any of the stuff that you'regoing to get advice from other
(47:37):
traditionally minded parentsabout punishing and isolating,
none of these things is actuallyhelping your child regulate.
They may be helping your childsuppress and repress, but
certainly not in a way that'sgoing to effectively work with
your kid.
And so I'm out of time.
I will have to do anotherepisode on neurodivergence.
(47:58):
But I hope that Tanya andCarlton and Rachel, you guys
have learned something.
And if you are listening to thisand you have a neurodivergent
kid, I would love to hear moreabout if this episode is helpful
to you.
But just take all of that andunderstand that the world was
not set up for kids like yours.
Uh, it's extra overwhelming forthem.
(48:18):
And I bet you they're doing thebest that they can with what
they have.
And I bet you that you're doinga really great job too.
All that it takes is thatconsistency to keep going and
that compassion and empathy toremember what it is to be a
child.
Imagine that you were them.
I bet that you wouldn't be doinganything to manipulate the
people who you love the most inthe world.
(48:39):
All right.
I'll catch you on the next one.
This has been the Whole ParentPodcast.
Thank you again for listening tothis episode of The Whole Parent
Podcast.
If you are listening to thisright now, yes, you in your car
driving somewhere on a walk withyour kids, perhaps your kids are
melting down and you'relistening to this on your
(49:02):
headphones with the noisecancellation turned on.
Whatever you're doing whileyou're listening, doing the
dishes at night after your kidsgo to bed, I don't know.
That would just be me if I waslistening.
Stop right now.
I have three quick favors to askyou.
I promise they're not going totake you very long.
The first one, very, very easy.
Go in to wherever you'relistening to this podcast and
(49:23):
rate it five stars.
That's one, two, three, four,five stars.
The more five star reviews thatour podcast gets as we
accumulate episodes, the morelikely it is to be pushed out to
more parents who are searchingfor parenting podcasts to solve
their problems.
Whatever you got out of thisepisode, whether it was
something that to try with yourkids, whether it was a new way
to think about parenting, maybethis episode was not
(49:44):
specifically about a problemthat you're having, but you're
somebody in your life who'shaving this problem.
Go in and rate it five stars.
And if you have an additional 30seconds, that first one only
takes you 10 seconds.
If you have an additional 30seconds, just type a few words
for me to read.
I'd love to read, I'd love toread the reviews.
If there's something specificthat's helped you, write it out.
It helps me to know what weshould keep doing here on the
(50:06):
podcast, week in and week out.
The second question that I havefor you, or request that I have
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Uh, it might be a parent,another parent in your kid's
class.
It might be a sibling who hasyoung kids, maybe it's your
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(50:27):
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I know it's vulnerable to sharepodcasts with people who you
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But I promise you, so many ofthe people who listen to this
podcast listened not becausethey followed me on social
media, but because they got apersonal recommendation from
(50:49):
somebody in their life who said,Hey, this guy has a way of
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You don't know if they listen toit or not, they might never
reply, but maybe, just maybe,they'll love the episode so much
that they become your newparenting partner out there in
the world, doing things the sameway that you are, and you might
have just made your newparenting bestie.
(51:10):
The last thing that you can dois definitely the biggest ask
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(51:31):
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If it's not worth the price of acoffee for you, obviously don't
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(51:51):
Those are the ways that you cansupport me.
And as always, I think thatyou're a great parent already.
But I do hope this episode gaveyou something to make you a
little bit better.
Take care.
Hello and welcome to an episode of the
Whole Parent podcast.
My name is John.
I'm at whole parent on all ofthe social medias.
And today on the podcast, wewill be answering three
questions that I have gottenfrom people who have emailed or
DM'd in their questions aboutparenting.
For those who don't know, I amon social media.
(00:21):
That's where I get the at wholeparent thing.
And I get lots and lots ofquestions from people, from
parents, I should say, probablyjust like you, if you're
listening to this episode.
And today we are kind of takinga different approach.
We've been talking aboutparenting struggles in the last
couple of weeks related tosiblings.
(00:42):
And oh man, what did we alreadytalk about two weeks ago?
You can see how the holidayseason is just zapping all of my
mental energy here.
I don't even remember right now,off the top of my head.
Should I look it up?
I probably should, right?
We talked two weeks ago aboutmornings, right?
Morning routines and how chaoticthey can be and how we can do
(01:04):
things a little bit more simply.
But this morning I said we'regonna do this morning, this
afternoon, whenever you'relistening to it, tonight,
whenever you're listening, we'retalking about something a little
bit different.
We are going into depth on kidswho the either the person who is
emailed in has identified, ormaybe I am just calling a form
(01:27):
of neurodivergence.
And so neurodivergence,parenting neurodivergent kids is
a hot topic.
It's obviously something that alot of people want to talk about
because an increasing number ofkids every year are diagnosed
with ASD, ADHD, or some otherversion of neurodivergence, some
(01:49):
other three-letter orfour-letter designation.
And I want to start by sayingthat in this episode, a little
bit of a caveat.
I am not a psychologist, I haveno ability to diagnose any
neurodivergence.
But the reason why I feelcompelled to talk about this is
number one, most people who havea neurodivergent kid are not
(02:11):
experts.
They are not psychologists, theyare not psychiatrists, they have
no formal training, and yet theystill have a kid who requires
excellent parenting.
And so the other reason I wantto talk about this today is
because my book, Punishment FreeParenting, which I don't plug a
lot on the podcast.
I should probably plug more.
My publisher, I'm sure, wishesthat I talked about it more.
(02:34):
My book, kind of surprisingly,was written to neurotypical
kids, or written to the parentsof neurotypical kids, I should
say.
It had no informationspecifically geared towards kids
with ADHD or ASD or anythingelse, for that matter.
But in the year since it's comeout, almost a year since it's
come out, 10 months, what'shappened is we've had more and
(02:57):
more practitioners andclinicians telling me that they
are using my book specificallywith kids who have sensitive
nervous systems, whether that'sASD or ADHD, or who have had a
traumatic experience, PTSD orCPTSD.
And as a result, nowincreasingly punishment for
(03:18):
reparenting is a book that isused by people in that
community.
And so I feel like a lot of myparenting advice is specifically
geared in ways that wasn'tintentionally going to help
those members of that community.
I am myself ADHD, and perhapsthat's part of it, is that I'm
parenting in line with my ownperspective.
(03:39):
I don't know if my kids haveneurodivergence.
Some of them act like it.
Some of them have certain thingsthat indicate to me that they
may be, but none of them havebeen diagnosed.
But I do come in contact withmany, many parents of
neurodivergent kids.
They're in my membership, andagain, they read my book, and
they found a lot of the helpfuland a lot of the information in
(04:00):
that, in those different placesto be helpful.
I also did a previous podcastepisode in the old format of the
podcast where I did deep diveswith different experts.
On ADHD, I brought in my friendDr.
Josh, who is a psychologist, totalk about parenting strategies
for kids with ADHD and what it'slike to parent a kid with ADHD.
And that is one of my mostdownloaded episodes ever.
(04:21):
In fact, it may be my mostdownloaded episode ever.
And I've had a lot of positivefeedback.
So this is kind of a 2.0 onthat.
We're not only talking aboutADHD today, we're talking about
neurodivergence of all kinds.
For those who are not watchingthis in a video form, yes, I am
back out on the porch.
Yes, it is still 40 degrees outhere.
It has not warmed up at allsince the last time I recorded a
(04:43):
podcast.
But I got a little heating padfor my feet.
I got a what I call a pizzawarmer above my head, one of
these infrared silent warmersthat gets you skin deep warm.
I got a little like lightsweatshirt on, and I feel pretty
good.
Mostly just excited and pumpedto be talking about parenting
today, as I always am.
(05:03):
It warms me right up.
So without further ado, I wantto jump into our first question
messaged in.
And this one comes from Rachel.
Rachel says, Hey John, my Ithink my five-year-old is
neurodivergent.
Mornings feel like a sensoryavalanche for him.
The lights, the clothes, thenoise, all of it.
By 7:30 a.m., he's alreadyoverwhelmed.
(05:24):
By 8 a.m., he's melting downwhile I'm trying to get everyone
out the door.
I don't want to treat him likehe's a quote, problem to be
solved.
Wow, Rachel, I love that.
But I also don't know how tosupport him when his environment
seems to attack him the secondthat he wakes up.
How do I make my mornings lessof a battlefield for his nervous
system and mine?
I'm glad that you ended it withand mine there, because one of
(05:47):
the first things that I want totell parents of neurodivergent
kids, whether your child ispotentially autistic, as you
said, or you just saidneurodivergent.
I'm kind of inferring autismhere, or ADHD.
No, you know what?
I shouldn't even say that.
Could be ASD, could be ADHD,could be none of the above,
could just be a highly sensitivekid, could be a kid with sensory
(06:07):
processing issues, could be alot of different things, right?
The first thing that I love thatyou said is that you need to
regulate your own nervoussystem.
And that's basically where Iwould want to begin any
conversation.
And that's by just starting bysaying, yeah, this is
overwhelming to parent kids likethis.
When I did a workshop on uhADHD, parenting ADHD and ASD
(06:29):
kids, that just called themstrong-willed kids, but it was
in the context of a group thatmeets of very neurodivergent
kids.
Uh, when I talked to that parentpopulation live, it was probably
six or eight months ago, I hadthis really amazing experience
of being able to see in realtime as I was kind of offering
(06:50):
them the principles that werethat are in punishment free
parenting, how they were kind ofembattled by their experience of
raising kids that are just alot.
They are challenging to parent,they require excellent
parenting.
And that experience reallyshaped me more than one-on-one
relationships with parents, morethan uh group coaching
environments and things likethat, where I have a group of
(07:11):
people.
When the group of people wasspecifically all parents of kids
who really, really struggledbecause they had opted to come
to an event like this, it wasvery clear to me how much taking
care of the parents was as muchas as important in the process
as taking care of the kids.
And so I want just to identifyhere first and foremost that I
(07:32):
think that you're probably doinga great job already.
Even the idea that your kid isnot a problem to solve gives me
the evidence to support theconclusion that you're probably
doing a pretty great jobalready, and that we do need to
come up with some tools andtactics and tricks, but that I
want to start with that.
The second piece here isunderstanding that this is not a
(07:52):
problem with your kid.
And I want to say that over andover because as we increasingly
see discussions ofneurodivergence, especially
autism, in the public square,let's say, when we have
different governmental leadersgetting up and speaking, some
more informed or less informedthan others, we often cast these
(08:14):
neurodivergences, these ways inwhich their neurology, their
brain, diverts from what isconsidered the typical or the
norm.
We view that as some sort ofproblem to be fixed or solved,
or some sort of, you know,disease that we need to cure or
prevent.
Instead of saying that probablymost of these kids have brains
(08:38):
that would do just fine if theworld was set up for those types
of brains.
And so the reason why I still douse the term neurotypical, even
though a lot of people havemoved away and said, well,
nobody's really neurotypical,the reason why I still will use
the term neurotypical is becauseI think it identifies a very key
sociological and culturalconstruct that we uh have here,
(09:02):
whether no matter where you are,but especially where I am in the
United States.
And that key construct is thatthe world is set up for
neurotypical people.
So wherever you fall within theneurotypical spectrum, that's uh
maybe a term that you haven'theard in the past, um, but
wherever you fall within thatneurotypical spectrum, if you
identify or if you believe or ifyou exhibit traits associated
(09:27):
with neurotypicalness, whatreally you're saying is that the
world is built for the type ofbrain that you have.
Now, obviously, that means thatthe world is not built for the
type of brains that kids who areneurodivergent have.
And I'll add adults, because oneof the important things to
recognize is that as much as wedon't know all of the causes of
(09:49):
neurodivergence, we know thatthe largest cause or the most
significant factor inneurodivergence is not an
environmental factor, it'sgenetics.
And so, as again, as people whomay or may not be
evidence-driven continue toforward this theory that there's
something in the water orthere's something in the
medication that we give pregnantwomen that is causing some kids
(10:12):
or an increased population ofkids to be neurodivergent, what
we know, the researchers whoactually study this stuff, is
that at least a significantfactor is that neurodivergent
people are getting married andhaving babies and
neurodivergence, especiallyADHD, is in some form or fashion
genetic.
And so understanding that forthis, everything I'm seeing in
(10:36):
this episode, many of theparents who are listening, maybe
were diagnosed, maybe were not.
It kind of depends on how oldyou are, where you lived in the
country, uh, whether you're aman or a woman.
Women tend to be far lessdiagnosed, uh, especially
historically, but even today,than men, if with either of
these things, you, or with anyform of neurodivergence, what
(10:57):
you're probably experiencingwith your kid often feels to
many parents very familiarbecause they may have a less
severe or a way of coping withthe experience of having kids.
And I think this is kind of ablessing, nature's blessing
here, or if you believe in Godor the universe or whatever you
believe in, there's kind of ablessing here in that, you know,
(11:19):
I think one of the mostcompelling things that we can do
for our kids is to learn toempathize and perspective take.
I very famously, Fred Rogers,who I quote probably more than
anyone else, and I quote thisquote more than any other quote,
he said, when asked, What is thenumber one things parents can do
to become better parents?
He said, to remember what it waslike to be a child.
And so, in many ways,neurodivergent parents are the
(11:39):
perfect people, more importantthan being a psychologist or a
psychiatrist or a parentingauthor or anything.
Um, the best person to parent aneurodivergent child is a
neurodivergent parent becausethey know what it is to
experience the world in thatway.
And sometimes that can come offin maladaptive ways, where the
child, the parent says to thechild, you know, just suck it
up, deal with it.
I had to deal with it.
(12:00):
But it can also be a veryadaptive experience of being
able to deeply empathize withthe experience that your child
is having.
And so, all this to say toRachel, it may be that your
nervous system is overwhelmedbecause anyone's nervous system
would be overwhelmed if you hada kid who was melting down and
overwhelmed by 8 a.m.
every single morning.
It may also be for you that it'sextra over stimulating because
(12:24):
neurodivergence is in some waypart of your story as well.
Now, it's funny that I began theepisode by saying that I didn't
remember what our episode twoweeks ago was about, or two
episodes ago it was about, Ishould say.
I don't always know when theseare going to exactly come out.
But the thing that I shouldbegin with is that if the
problem is with mornings, one ofthe key things that we can do
(12:49):
with neurodivergent kids whostruggle with executive
functioning and task managementoften, and all will get stuck on
things or get hyperfixated ornot be able to do items in a
series and things like that, isto create a very brutally
predictable morning routine.
So you can go back and listen tothat episode.
I'm not going to rehasheverything I said there.
But it is important to rememberthat the reason why kids need
(13:09):
routines, why they thrive withinroutines so to such a better
extent than even adults do isbecause they struggle to predict
the future.
Well, this is more true withkids who struggle with executive
functioning, and even more trueof kids with ASD, ADHD, et
cetera, when the plans thensubsequently change.
And so if you're having aproblem every morning, then I
(13:32):
would say you probably need abetter morning routine.
And I by better, I don't meanlike you have to be some sort of
wizard and you have to like haveeverything ready all the time,
but rather that it's very, verybrutally predictable to kids.
Kids who are neurodivergent tendto thrive in environments that
are structured with routines.
And you might be saying toyourself, but John, all kids
thrive in those environments.
That's right.
(13:52):
In many ways, everything I'mgoing to say in this episode is
also true of neurotypical kids.
In many ways, everything I'msaying in this episode can be
applied to neurotypical kids.
And if we raise them in the sameway that we raise ADHD kids,
they are AD ASD kids, they'dprobably do better than if we
just raise them with a lesscaring way.
This is why I say kids who areneurodivergent just require
(14:13):
excellent parenting, right?
I'm gonna say that again.
Kids who are neurodivergent justrequire excellent parenting.
It is not that kids who are notneurodivergent would totally
fail or would totally fail if wegave them this type of
parenting.
In fact, they would probably dobetter too.
It's just that they can usuallytolerate worse parenting.
And so what's great parentingabout the morning?
(14:33):
Well, as I talk about in mybook, it's making sure that your
kids are fed when they'reactually hungry.
A lot of us don't feed our kidsenough in the morning, and I'm
not saying breakfast is the mostimportant meal of the day or
some other, you know, kind ofplacation here, but or you know,
uh, I don't want to sayplacation, that's probably the
wrong word.
Some other sort of, you know,just turn a phrase or cliche.
(14:55):
It's that kids who are hungryare harder to parent.
It may be that bedtime needs tobe earlier the night before.
Why?
Because if a kid is not wellrested and we know that kids who
are neurodivergent need just asmuch or more sleep than their
neurotypical counterparts, thenthey're going to be more
dysregulated in the morning aswell.
It may be that yourneurodivergent kid right now is
(15:16):
using a bunch of screens as soonas they wake up because maybe
they're an early riser, andthat's causing them to have this
huge dopamine letdown before theday even starts.
And so now the lights, theclothes, the noise show up and
they're hungry or they're tiredor they've, you know, had all
these high dopamine activities,or maybe they're just eating
(15:36):
sugar every morning and that'sall they're eating.
And I'm not trying to demonizebreakfast cereal or anything
like that, but justunderstanding that as all of
these things compound in aneurodivergent child, then it
becomes intolerable to have theitchy clothes, the noise, and
all of it.
So, what does this look like?
Number one, I would say it mightlook like turning down the
lights.
It might look like having lessscratchy clothes, it might look
(15:59):
like having a quieter morningroutine to try and play
whack-a-mole with thoseindividual triggers for your
child.
But it might also be that theirresilience tank is already so
depleted by the fact that theydon't know what's coming next.
The morning routine's notconsistent, they don't know how
to navigate all of thesedifferent things, being hungry,
being tired, being overwhelmedor overstimulated, that when all
(16:21):
of those things come alltogether, then mornings feel
super chaotic.
And it may be that if you tooksome time to reset and actually
set down a morning routine, itmight be a lot easier for them
to manage the lights and theclothes and the noise, even, you
know, and so we can attack thistwo prongs from both sides.
We can start to remove some ofthe triggers while also removing
(16:45):
some of those things that makeour kids inherently less
resilient.
And again, this goes for notneuro, only neurotypical kids.
You said, hey, look, I think myfive-year-old is neurodivergent.
I would say, whether your childis neurodivergent or not, this
is all good advice.
At least in this case, uh, thisis good advice because this is
what how kids tend to thrive.
So that's what I would do firstand foremost.
(17:07):
The next thing that I would dois I would work on a couple
emotional regulation games.
And this is probably a good timeto plug the emotional regulation
game guide that I have.
Emotional regulation games forneurodivergent kids can be
really, really regulatingforces.
I think that these workespecially well with ADHD kids,
at least in my experience,parents of ADHD kids get a ton
(17:28):
out of the emotional regulationgame guide.
I have a full emotionalregulation game guide that is
like 25 games.
It's actually been recentlyupdated.
I don't even know if by the timethis episode airs, the new one
will be up.
The old one's great too.
That's about 19 bucks.
I also have a free one with fivegames.
And I'm excited to also announcethat I have a children's book
(17:48):
coming out, my wife illustratedin April, at the end of April,
that is just emotionalregulation games as well in the
format of a picture book.
And so you can play these withyour kids.
But having those emotionalregulation games, whether you
get them from me or whether youmake them up on your own, those
can be helpful tools becauseeventually something is going to
go off the rails, right?
(18:09):
Eventually something is notgoing to go well, and you are
going to have to help your kidto co-regulate.
And the way to do that with aneurodivergent kid is often to
play an emotional regulationgame, where with a neurotypical
kid, you might be able toregulate them by just saying,
okay, slow down, take somebreaths.
Probably not going to work witha kid who's already kind of at a
10 over the over stimulation ofthe environment.
(18:31):
And so that's kind of mythree-pronged approach to this
one, Rachel.
It'd be number one, take care ofyourself.
Oh, I didn't even say that one.
Let me let me let me pause for amoment to say that one.
What I was saying at thebeginning when I all got
started, part of the reason thejoy of this being unscripted and
not written out is thatsometimes I'm going to, it's
going to feel very natural.
(18:52):
And sometimes feeling natural isgoing to be that I get
distracted and I forget my firstpoint.
My first point was supposed tobe that you need to take
impeccable care of yourself,Rachel.
It means that you need to beregulated yourself.
You need to make sure thatyou've eaten and been properly
caffeinated or uncaffeinated, ifthat works for you.
You need to make sure that youand your nervous system are
getting the help that you needand getting the sleep that you
(19:15):
need.
Because if you're trying toparent a neurodivergent kid from
a depleted state, I promise you,it's it's going to be so much
harder.
And those kids can really pickup when we're not in a good
place and they're gonna mirrorthe heck out of that.
And so step one is always totake impeccable care of
yourself.
And anytime that you're doingsomething that's self-care
related, as the parent of aneurodivergent kid, I want you
(19:37):
to think of it as doing it atleast in part for them.
You are taking care of yourselffor them.
It makes it a lot easier toprioritize that extra exercise
or prioritize that extra sleepin the beginning of the night or
going to bed earlier orprioritize, you know, doing
whatever you need to do,journaling, whatever, to make
you feel good.
Prioritizing, taking time awayfrom your kids, to have
(20:00):
relationships outside of yourkids, uh, being with your
partner, being intimate withyour partner, whatever that
looks like for you, all of thoseself-care needs, those should
not be things that you areselfishly doing in spite of your
kids and what they need fromyou.
When you have a neurodivergentkid, especially, I mean, this is
true for all parents, butespecially parents of
neurodivergent kids who requireso much more often.
(20:21):
Taking impeccable care ofyourself is one of the most
giving and loving things thatyou can do for that child.
So that's step one, takeimpeccable care of yourself.
Step two is to make apredictable morning routine that
that is working with thosethings, not only the seen
triggers, the lights, theclothes, the noise, but also the
unseen triggers, the hunger, theexhaustion, the dopamine
(20:44):
letdown, whatever that lookslike.
And then last but not least,it's I don't even remember where
I was going with this.
(22:28):
Oh, yeah.
It's understanding that for themyou need to work within the
nervous system response andcreate these predictable
routines that are gonna workwith them.
I I feel like I just said threethings, but then I was waiting
for a third thing.
Oh man.
As you can tell, I'm it's latein the day for me now.
(22:49):
I'm already starting to lose mygrip.
It's okay.
I'm gonna take a quick realbreak here, and then we're gonna
get back to caller number two orquestion number two.
My life my wife always liststhese as caller questions.
And I'm like, why are we sayingthey're callers?
They're always emails.
Nobody's leaving a message withthese things.
Although, if they did, man, Icould just play their message.
(23:10):
That would be fun.
Okay, take a quick break.
We'll get to number two withCarlton.
All right.
Carlton says, Hey John, myseven-year-old is ADHD.
I'm gonna assume, Carlton, thatyou have a diagnosis, but even
(23:31):
if you don't, that's okay.
The school has become a dailyspiral for him.
Uh, okay, we're talking aboutschool.
Okay.
His teacher says that he'sbright and curious, not
surprised.
And but I'm getting calls homealmost every day.
He's getting in trouble, missinginstruction, or just generally
melting down.
By the time he gets home, he'sso spent that every little tiny
thing sets him off.
(23:52):
The whole evening becomesrecovery mode.
How do I support him in schoolso it doesn't drain every bit of
his resilience by 3 p.m.?
Carlton, man, this is a reallyhard question to answer.
Maybe I should have filteredthis one and not put it up on
the podcast or thought about itfor longer before I did this.
I'm probably going to give ananswer that most people are not
(24:12):
going to like.
But I hope, Carlton, that you atleast can accept it for what it
is.
When I finished writingPunishment Free Parenting, I
started to think after theprocess of like, you know, doing
all of the marketing for it andpromotions for it, which I'm
kind of actually bummed that Ididn't get to do more promotion
for it.
I felt like my publisher droppedthe ball on that a little bit.
(24:35):
But when I finished it, Istarted thinking about like did
was this an enjoyable experiencefor me?
And immediately I concluded,yeah, I love writing books.
It's like one of my favoritethings to do.
It was a very easy yes of do Iwant to write another book?
The challenge became do I wantto write another book with this
publisher?
And do I want another writeanother book?
(24:56):
What do I want my next book tobe about?
I mean, obviously I wrote thispunishment free parenting.
That's about general parentingwisdom.
It was a great first book basedon the platform, based on the
podcast, based on all that.
But the question was, what am Igoing to write about next?
And a couple things popped upfor me.
Could talk aboutneurodivergence, could talk
about siblings, could talk abouteducation.
(25:17):
And initially, I landed onwriting a book about education.
And the reason why I wanted towrite a book about education is
in many ways, everything that Ihad talked about in punishment
free parenting, this idea thatwe actually know a better way to
parent, and that most people whoare experts in parenting know
this better way to parent, butit's not wild, widely available
(25:40):
to the average person who has akid.
A lot of the same themes aretrue within education.
Most of the people who areleading educational reform
efforts, who are experts ineducation, they know what some
of the problems are that wehave, and yet they those
problems are not being addressedby the average teacher or by the
average principal or schooldistrict.
(26:03):
And so I spent a long timeresearching the history of
education, probably a hundredhours or more, definitely more
than a hundred hours, actually,now that I think about it,
prepping and writing theproposal for this education
book.
And before I even sent theproposal in, in the process of
editing that proposal, after I'dwritten a chapter of the book
and written the outline of thebook and all this other stuff, I
(26:24):
was asked a question by myagent.
And she basically was like,okay, so what do you want people
to actually do?
What's the good news here?
And I started to think, youknow, that is a good question.
I don't want to just, you know,issue a bunch of problems and
maybe even solutions to thoseproblems that parents can't
actually, or or schooladministrators can't actually
(26:45):
impl put into practice.
And so I started to look at howthese reform efforts, the ones
that were widely accepted,things like the the how homework
before the age of you know 12 isbasically pointless and is more
destructive to kids than lettingthem just play freely outside.
Things about grade segregation,right?
(27:07):
Both, and I mean that in avariety of ways, grade
segregation and the idea that wesegregate kids by age, the way
that we segregate kids, and alsothe way that we segregate kids
by what types of grades theyget.
The process that we often calltracking or detracking, where a
kid who's performing at a highlevel gets pushed forward while
a kid who's not gets kind ofheld back.
(27:29):
Even if they are progressingthrough the grade levels, they
might be not progressing asquickly through, let's say,
trigonometry or English.
They're not on the honors trackor the AP track, they're on the
regular track or the remedialtrack.
And so a lot of these thingswere, you know, the necessity of
creativity, the failure of thegrading system in general, the
assessment system, standardizedtesting being a problem, like
(27:52):
all of these things that werewidely accepted.
And one of the things that waswidely accepted was how poor
schools are at handling anddealing with kids who are
neurodivergent.
And as we see more and more kidsbeing diagnosed, again, that may
not be entirely because of theincrease in actual people who
have these conditions, but alsomight just be the understanding
(28:15):
gap of how we're coding things.
And kids who would never havebeen coded as ASD in the past,
who might have received anAsperger's diagnosis or no
diagnosis at all, are now beingcoded as ASD.
Um, that in the process of that,as we're seeing that, we need to
adjust schools accordingly.
And as I've tried to pushforward into this, what became
(28:35):
very clear was that none ofthese systems, there was any
hope in my mind of change.
And that was a really hard thingfor me because I am a deeply
hopeful person.
And I wound up scrapping thebook.
And I tell this long story onthe podcast to say I wound up
scrapping the book because Ihave no faith whatsoever.
(28:56):
Not in teachers.
I have so much faith inteachers.
They're doing an amazing job.
Many of them are implementingthese reforms in their own
classes to the extent to whichit's appropriate.
Not even in administrators, who,by and large, many of them were
trying to make these reforms,not in school boards, but in the
system as a whole.
What I started to receive wasnot back in the form of modern
(29:16):
education research, was not thatanything I was saying was wrong,
but rather that what I wassaying was impractical with the
system that we have set up.
The system that we have set upnow is designed to filter kids,
to, you know, push certain kidsforward, to hold certain kids
back, to basically just bechildcare at an early age while
also simultaneously pushing themthrough these different ranks.
(29:37):
And that to change that systemwould be fundamentally upset the
Apple cart for a population ofpeople who doesn't vote and is
generally not considered in thepublic sphere, and that's
children.
And I was deeply kind of hurt bythat.
And the result, and why I sellthis question this answer in the
midst of this commentary toCarlton here, is because the sh
(30:03):
unshakable reality is that a kidwith ADHD is going to struggle
in these environments.
And there's not a whole lot wecan do about it.
There's not a whole lot we cando when the system is set up for
a person whose brain does notfunction like your
(30:23):
seven-year-old ADHD child, whichis why we tend to medicate.
For some people it works well,for others, it doesn't seem to
work as well.
If you're working with apractitioner, a healthcare
provider, a psychiatrist who isworking with you on that, I I
trust them to make the bestdecision for your tr you and
(30:44):
your child, especially if you'recogn conscious and aware and
working with them.
But basically, all of ourinterventions are around the
fact that kids need to bechanged to fit within the system
rather than the system bechanged to fit the children that
are in it.
And a kid like your son,Carlton, is going to struggle
(31:09):
because the way in which theinstruction is done, again, to
no fault of the teachers, butthe way in which the instruction
is done, the way in which all ofthese different facets interplay
with one another, it's not setup for him.
It's designed to filter him outin many ways.
And if he's able to overcomethat in the long term by coping
(31:32):
strategies, working with you.
Again, medication, if that iswhat works in his case.
But but really, societal factorsbeyond medication is it's it's
medication plus, right?
It's never just medication inisolation.
Um if he's able to overcome, theoutlook for him is extremely
good.
You know, 40% or some crazynumber of all CEOs are ADHD.
(31:56):
So I I'm not worried about hislong-term future, but getting to
that long-term future feels likea daily spiral, which is what
you called it.
I'm not surprised that you getcalls home.
I'm not surprised that they sayhe's bright and curious.
The calls home probably comefrom some form or fashion of not
(32:16):
needing more physical movementwithin class, being bored by
things that he feels that he'salready understood, causing
mischief and trouble becausehe's curious and or not wanting
to move on.
Maybe he wants to continue tostay on a given topic.
And just generally melting downwhen all of those things kind of
coalesce and he's told, no, justlike suck it up, you know, deal
(32:39):
with your emotions and and cope.
And so I'm not surprised that hecomes home and he's exhausted
and the entire evening isrecovery mode.
The truth is, again, I don'tknow if he's on medication or
not, but this is what parents ofkids who are on medication often
report because the medicationwears off by three, four o'clock
in the afternoon.
And now the kid is just likekind of bouncing off the walls.
(33:01):
They're they're going nuts athome.
So the school may receive thebenefits of that, or the child
may receive the benefits of thatin the school environment, but
often not at home.
And so I'm not surprised thatit's recovery mode.
I think that the key withsupporting him is number one, to
set expectations around schooland say, hey, look, I am not
(33:22):
going to be the person who isgoing to place all of my stock
in whether you're a good or abad kid, based on what teachers
or uh the school environmentsays.
You know, I know that you'rebright and curious.
I know that you are thoughtfuland empathetic.
I know who you are, and I'm notgoing to allow that perception
to be shaped by your inabilityto fit into a system that was
(33:43):
not designed for you.
I think that a lot of positivecomes from that.
I think one of the things thatyou can do as recovery mode is
to allow for that, you know, Icall the three things that every
kid needs when they get home.
It's especially true, probably,for your son.
Number one, some food.
They're probably desperatelyhungry.
Number two, they need to move.
(34:03):
And number three, they need tojust not be bossed around.
They need some autonomy.
And so you have the restraintcollapse that comes when we
don't, when they don't havethose things.
But if we can give them thosethings immediately, I think that
that would be better.
Another thing that I would sayis that when we have a kid who
needs that freedom and thatautonomy, which lots of ADHD
(34:23):
kids do, they need it to agreater extent even than their
neurotypical counterparts.
Those kids probably not gonna bea great fit for a bunch of
organized sports immediatelywhen school ends, right?
Because they've already had tostruggle through the concept of
being bossed around all day andnow they get you know dumped
into a soccer team where they'rejust gonna be bossed around some
(34:45):
more.
They need free, kind ofunstructured play, a lot of it.
And I think that that could, insome ways, uh curtail some of
that recovery mode necessity.
But I think the truth is in someways, the way that you're
supporting him in supportinghim, no matter how you support
(35:06):
him, his resilience is to someextent going to be drained by 3
p.m.
Because imagine you were in anenvironment that was just a job
that was absolutely life-suckingto you, you would be drained by
3 p.m.
And I don't know the solutionhere.
Again, I I scrapped the bookbecause I didn't have a real
solution that was practical.
(35:27):
But what I know is that asparents of ADHD kids, we have to
think seriously about what ourexpectations are about that and
to think long term, right?
I like to imagine that my job isto help my kid to be healthy and
happy and relationally strongand mentally strong for their
whole life, not just for theirschooling years.
(35:49):
A lot of parents arehyper-fixated on getting their
kid to 18 with straight A's anda lot of extracurriculars, or
getting their kid graduated fromcollege with all of these
accolades and exciting thingshappening for them and getting
them into their first job.
I don't really care about thatstuff nearly as much as I care
about the emotional resilience,the mental health, the
(36:10):
relational resilience, and allof those things that that by and
large, we don't that's not thestuff that made the the the the
how good your job is and howmuch money you make and and all
that and the opportunities thatare afforded to you.
Not a lot of that has to do withyour life after about 35 years
old.
Just because you started at alower position, or just because
(36:32):
you didn't go to that premiercollege and you went to the
state school or even thecommunity college or whatever, a
lot of that stuff comes out inthe wash when you've been in two
or three jobs.
Nobody is asking anymore whatwhat school you went to when
you're 35 years old.
Nobody's asking anymore whatyour grade was in biology
freshman year, even when you're25 years old.
And so I think much of lookingforward as a seven-year-old for
(36:57):
the next, let's say, 70 years ofhis life or 80 years of his
life, 10 times his life, right?
So if he's only 10% of the waythrough his life or less than
10% of the way through his life,how many of those years is going
to be spent in an environmentlike this?
I mean, another 10, 15 yearsmax?
And then what do you have?
(37:19):
You can either have a kid who'sbeen beat down by the system
that was not designed for him,and he feels like there's
something wrong with him and hefeels like a failure, and the
parents just, you know, kind oflockstep with the educational
institution that said, you willcomply and you will do all this
stuff.
Or, or you can say, you knowwhat, my kid is curious and he's
(37:42):
bright, and I'm gonna focus onthat, and I'm gonna focus on
leading into that, rather thanmy kid gets in trouble every day
or misses instruction or ismentally melting down.
I don't even care about themissed instruction at seven,
right?
They can catch up.
I care about the melting downbecause it tells me that there's
some there's some fundamentalneed not being met.
There's not a lot you can dowith the school system.
(38:03):
You can get an IEP or ordifferent uh educational plans
to try and give him the thestuff that he needs.
Some of that's gonna work, someof it's not.
I think really the main thing isthe mindset shift away from this
is the most important thingever, to maybe it's not.
Maybe there are other thingsthat we can do in life that are
(38:26):
more designed for him, artisticendeavors, athletic endeavors
that are just more suited to hisdesires and thoughts and hopes
and dreams.
You can't really make an ADHDperson do something.
I was actually talking to avery, very famous parenting
creator, probably the biggestparenting creator on the
internet, at least on Instagram.
(38:47):
I was talking to her and she'sADHD, and I was kind of
explaining this to her, and shewas like, Oh my gosh, nobody's
ever said this to me in thisway, and it's so helpful.
I said, You can't really make anADHD person do something.
You can the only way is toinspire them that they want to
do it.
And once you inspire an ADHDperson to want to do something,
(39:07):
there's nothing that they cannotdo.
But doing something that youhate and doing something you
don't want to do, it's about theworst thing that you can force
on a person.
It just will never work.
And so now I'm gonna take alittle break, take a drink, and
then come back with anotheranswer.
(39:28):
I hope that that was not theworst answer ever, Carlton.
Question number three comes fromTanya.
She says, Hi John, mynine-year-old is incredibly
bright.
Another bright kid, notsurprising, but struggles with
emotional regulation in waysthat parents don't seem to
(39:50):
understand.
I'm sorry, in ways that otherparents don't seem to
understand.
People keep telling me thatshe's being dramatic or
manipulative and I should stopgiving in.
I want to help her, but I don'tknow where to start.
I know you're the no punishmentguy, but punishment seems like
the only option sometimes.
Tanya, thank you for thisquestion.
(40:10):
Thank you for the honesty ofsaying, hey, you're the no
punishment guy, but I don't knowif that's gonna work for me.
Um let me begin by saying thatthe way that first thing that I
want to say is that yourinstincts that your child is not
emotionally manipulating youwith their lack of emotional
regulation are correct.
(40:32):
Kids do not manipulate parentswith by melting down.
I'm not saying that kids have nocapacity, especially a nine, to
manipulate their parents.
I'm saying that the way in whicha child melting down is is cast
often as manipulation isnonsense.
It is not manipulation.
She is having a hard time, sheis not giving you a hard time.
(40:54):
And that is likely becauseemotional regulation for her is
what we call a lagging skill.
I've spent the last, I don'tknow, how long of this episode's
even been, 40 minutes orsomething, um, talking about
neurodivergence, and I cannotbelieve it hasn't come up yet,
come up yet, but I'm gonna sayit right now.
The best book on neurodivergenceis actually not billed as a book
(41:15):
on neurodivergence.
It's called The Explosive Child,other than my book, of course.
Mine is the best, but no, justkidding.
Ross Green.
Dr.
Ross Green wrote The ExplosiveChild, I don't know how many
years ago, but it is changed mylife.
It is the second, my secondfavorite parenting book after
The Whole Brain Child.
And honestly, it might be myfirst favorite parenting book.
I gotta get him on the podcast,even if it's in the older
(41:37):
format, because he is brilliant.
And one of the things that hetalks about is that all of these
different diagnoses, and again,he is a doctor, so he can do all
of the diagnosing, unlike me,right?
But he said, you know, whetherit's ASD, ADHD, ODD, PDA, even
Tourette's in certain cases, nomatter how what diagnosis is
(41:57):
leveraged on these kids, reallywhat it comes down to is that
they have a lacking skill or alagging skill.
I think I said lacking, right?
Lacking or a lagging skill inemotional regulation.
In the same way that a childlearns how to walk at 12 months,
roughly.
Although, you know, I thought mydaughter was gonna be able to
walk.
It's she's now 13 months old,she can't.
She's not lagging yet.
(42:18):
But you know, kids can have alagging skill.
I had a one of my kids who waslagging skill of talking.
He needed speech therapy.
Um, some kids have a laggingskill related to emotional
regulation.
They emotionally regulate likethey're many years younger than
they are.
And really, what happens is wejust need to spend more time
continuing to co-regulate withthose kids because it's a
(42:39):
lagging skill.
It's a skill that just takesthem longer to develop.
What happens is parents whodon't see that on a day-to-day
basis, who cannot identify thatthis kid is having a hard time
and they think, oh, they mustjust be manipulating their mom
or their dad, they come in andsay, oh, well, they're just
manipulative because they'renine.
They have to be able to do this.
(43:00):
No, that is not true.
There are kids who havedifferent lagging emo d
developmental skills atdifferent times.
There are kids who can be nighttrained from their diapers at
two years old.
There are other kids who cannotbe because they don't have
antidiuretic hormone that thatis produced in their body
naturally.
And so they can't be nighttrained until they begin to
(43:22):
produce that hormone.
Again, this is a very, nobodywould be going after a kid who
couldn't walk at 14 months andsaying, oh, they're just
manipulating you.
They can totally walk, they'rejust manipulating you.
No, it's obviously a laggingskill.
A person who can't hit abaseball has a lagging skill,
right?
Some of us never develop thatskill very well.
But person, you know, all ofthese things are skills to be
(43:45):
developed.
And emotional regulation is inthe same way a skill.
It is a it is neural pathways inthe brain that have to be uh
built.
Some people build those neuralpathways more easily than
others.
Some people require additionalrepetitions before they really
understand it.
Your daughter is a person whohas a lagging emotional
regulation skills.
You have identified it that way.
(44:05):
Don't believe the hype thatsomehow this is her manipulating
you.
And when you understand thatwhat she's doing is not
misbehavior, it's trying to gether needs met, and she has no
ability to do so because shecan't emotionally regulate on
her own, you realize that you'renot giving in.
I'm not saying that you don'thave to have boundaries, you do.
And that's going to help her.
Boundaries help kids whostruggle with emotional
(44:26):
regulation, no doubt.
But really, the the key here iswhat I said all the way back in
the first one, which is doingthose emotional regulation
exercises and games, even with anine-year-old, because it's
through the repetition of goingthrough the stress cycle, I get
escalated and then I come out ofit, I get escalated, and then my
mom brings me out of it, I getescalated, and then I learn how
(44:46):
to get out of it, that theydevelop those neural pathways so
that they can do it on theirown.
So, why do I think punishment isnot going to be effective?
Because if it was trulymanipulation, punishment might
disincentivize the manipulativebehavior because the child fears
for either their safety or insome way that they're going to
(45:07):
receive harm, social harm, beingseparated, relational harm,
being isolated from theirparent, emotional harm, being
screamed at, physical harm,being spanked, right?
Like all of these are differentways.
Punishment is just differentways of harming a child to make
them not want to do a thing thatyou don't want them to do.
It may stop the manipulation inthe short term, at least with
(45:27):
you, may probably not with otherpeople, but I don't think it's
manipulation.
And so now you're punishing achild because they can't
regulate their emotions.
And punishment, we know, justcauses children to become more
dysregulated.
Because while it may, they maygo internal with a behavior and
they may freeze because they'reafraid of what's going to happen
(45:48):
next, that is not actuallyregulating their emotions.
Right?
If you could scan their brain,they would be no less afraid.
They would be more afraid.
Just the outward manifestationof that fear might not be in
tantruming.
It might be in lock jaw terror.
And so punishment seems like theonly option if what she was
(46:09):
doing was intentionallymanipulative.
And even if she was, it wouldn'tbe the only option.
There are so many betteroptions, including the
deployment of effectiveconsequences and good strategies
of working with.
And I haven't even talked, ohman, I man, I'm out of time in
this episode, but I haven't evenbegun to talk about all of the
collaborative problem solvingstuff, right?
The stuff from the end of mybook, that's the stuff that's
(46:31):
the best with ADHD kids.
Go back and watch the originalepisode on ADHD.
Do you talk about collaborativeproblem solving as like the
fundamental strategy to use?
Way better than punishment.
But I can promise you the reasonthat punishment in this case is
especially harmful and unhelpfulis because what's occurring is
not a manipulation.
And the last thing that I'll sayhere from Dr.
(46:53):
Ross Green's book is that thisis going to look like choosing
your battles.
That there is going to be timeswhen a kid, a kid is melting
down over everything.
You can't try and fix everythingat once.
You have to settle in on one ortwo things, remove the triggers
around those things, and thenfocus on the emotional
regulation games and skillsaround those things, and then
(47:16):
use the successes of thosethings to build on future
things.
You cannot, you know, Romewasn't built in a day, and the
neural pathways that are formedover literal years that it
requires to learn how toeffectively regulate your
emotions are not built in a dayeither.
And any of the stuff that you'regoing to get advice from other
(47:37):
traditionally minded parentsabout punishing and isolating,
none of these things is actuallyhelping your child regulate.
They may be helping your childsuppress and repress, but
certainly not in a way that'sgoing to effectively work with
your kid.
And so I'm out of time.
I will have to do anotherepisode on neurodivergence.
(47:58):
But I hope that Tanya andCarlton and Rachel, you guys
have learned something.
And if you are listening to thisand you have a neurodivergent
kid, I would love to hear moreabout if this episode is helpful
to you.
But just take all of that andunderstand that the world was
not set up for kids like yours.
Uh, it's extra overwhelming forthem.
(48:18):
And I bet you they're doing thebest that they can with what
they have.
And I bet you that you're doinga really great job too.
All that it takes is thatconsistency to keep going and
that compassion and empathy toremember what it is to be a
child.
Imagine that you were them.
I bet that you wouldn't be doinganything to manipulate the
people who you love the most inthe world.
(48:39):
All right.
I'll catch you on the next one.
This has been the Whole ParentPodcast.
Thank you again for listening tothis episode of The Whole Parent
Podcast.
If you are listening to thisright now, yes, you in your car
driving somewhere on a walk withyour kids, perhaps your kids are
melting down and you'relistening to this on your
(49:02):
headphones with the noisecancellation turned on.
Whatever you're doing whileyou're listening, doing the
dishes at night after your kidsgo to bed, I don't know.
That would just be me if I waslistening.
Stop right now.
I have three quick favors to askyou.
I promise they're not going totake you very long.
The first one, very, very easy.
Go in to wherever you'relistening to this podcast and
(49:23):
rate it five stars.
That's one, two, three, four,five stars.
The more five star reviews thatour podcast gets as we
accumulate episodes, the morelikely it is to be pushed out to
more parents who are searchingfor parenting podcasts to solve
their problems.
Whatever you got out of thisepisode, whether it was
something that to try with yourkids, whether it was a new way
to think about parenting, maybethis episode was not
(49:44):
specifically about a problemthat you're having, but you're
somebody in your life who'shaving this problem.
Go in and rate it five stars.
And if you have an additional 30seconds, that first one only
takes you 10 seconds.
If you have an additional 30seconds, just type a few words
for me to read.
I'd love to read, I'd love toread the reviews.
If there's something specificthat's helped you, write it out.
It helps me to know what weshould keep doing here on the
(50:06):
podcast, week in and week out.
The second question that I havefor you, or request that I have
for you, favor, let's call it,is to share this episode with
somebody in your life who youthink could use it.
Uh, it might be a parent,another parent in your kid's
class.
It might be a sibling who hasyoung kids, maybe it's your
kid's teacher or a faith leaderin your life, whomever it is
(50:27):
that you think should have thisepisode of the podcast or any
episode of the podcast, send itdirectly to them.
I know it's vulnerable to sharepodcasts with people who you
might not have that close of arelationship with, or even more
vulnerable if you do have aclose relationship with them.
But I promise you, so many ofthe people who listen to this
podcast listened not becausethey followed me on social
media, but because they got apersonal recommendation from
(50:49):
somebody in their life who said,Hey, this guy has a way of
talking about parenting thatjust works for me.
You don't know if they listen toit or not, they might never
reply, but maybe, just maybe,they'll love the episode so much
that they become your newparenting partner out there in
the world, doing things the sameway that you are, and you might
have just made your newparenting bestie.
(51:10):
The last thing that you can dois definitely the biggest ask
for me, but it is to go over toSubstack.
That link is down below in thebio, and to subscribe so that
these episodes can keep comingto you.
Paid subscriptions on Substackis the only way currently that I
am being funded here on theWhole Parent Podcast.
That is the only money that Ireceive.
It is$5 a month.
(51:31):
I think that this podcast isworth the price of a coffee for
you.
If it's not worth the price of acoffee for you, obviously don't
do it.
But if you're extra cheap likeme, you can just subscribe
annually.
I know that you're gonna listenfor the rest of the year.
If you know that you're gonnalisten for the rest of the year,
just give me 50 bucks up front,and then you don't have to think
about it coming out of yourcredit card every single month.
(51:51):
Those are the ways that you cansupport me.
And as always, I think thatyou're a great parent already.
But I do hope this episode gaveyou something to make you a
little bit better.
Take care.
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