ADHD Mums

Have you ever been to a friend’s house where the kids walk around like they’re in a library, and yours are running like it’s a race car track? And on the drive home you’re already doing the maths on what she’s doing that you’re not. If you’re parenting ADHD kids, you know the list. You’ve read the books. You do the warnings, the timers, the snack in the car. And the noise in your house still doesn...

Only 5% of the most-watched ADHD videos tell you what to do next. The misleading ones get millions more views. You’ve saved hundreds of them. They all say the same thing: that’s me. So does social media make ADHD worse? A listener asked me exactly that, and halfway through asking, she lost her own train of thought. I get into the question underneath it. Not what the reels make you feel, but what t...

Have you ever looked at your two children — one whose needs are loud, out front, impossible to miss, and one who just gets on with it — and quietly told yourself the second one's fine? Have you ever not gone looking, because who goes hunting for a problem in the child who seems okay, when the other one is taking everything you've got? The quiet one learns to need nothing at all. And it can cost he...

She mentioned a friend called Kel. That was it. That was the whole thing. Twelve seconds, and you'd filed her under no vacancy, decided your kids didn't match, and worked out she already had a Tuesday person. Then the term ended and you didn't sign up again, and she probably has no idea any of it happened. This episode is about the forecast you make in the first few seconds, and whether it was eve...

Nine good comments in the performance review. One 'area for growth'. Three days later you can still quote the one, word for word. You couldn't name a single one of the nine. That's ADHD rejection sensitivity, and the usual fixes don't touch it. Don't take it personally. Keep a praise folder. You've tried. There's a reason the nine never land, and it's not that you're too sensitive. More episodes o...

You did Pilates every week for a year. Then you bought the reformer so you'd never have to drive there again. You haven't done Pilates since. Now there's a new idea that won't leave you alone, and it feels exactly like the last one did on day one. So how do you know if this one's real? That's the ADHD hyperfocus question a listener sent in. She's been a teacher for 27 years. For the last few years...

You rolled forty identical socks into pairs the night before your mum arrived. Then unrolled them all on Monday. The hack works. It's worked for six months. So why does it feel like you're getting away with something? This Mum Hacks starts with a voice memo about forty pairs of identical white socks and ends with a confession about mine. In between: the two piles every objection from your inner cr...

A nurse who gives out meds all day found May's script in her glove box in July. Still in the chemist bag. She bought the pill box with the days on the lid. Put it next to the toothbrush, like everyone says. It worked for two weeks. Then one morning she looked straight at it, and she was already in the car. The verdict she landed on: careless with the thing that matters most. It might not be that....

Have you ever fought for years — the waitlist, the referrals, the appointments where nobody believed you — finally got the diagnosis, and then sat in the aftermath feeling nothing? Have you ever had everyone around you exhale and tell you how relieved you must be, while you felt flat, wrung out, and grieving something you couldn't even name — and then guilty, because didn't you get exactly what yo...

Have you ever found the old laundry basket in the garage, full of paint tins, and couldn't say when it stopped being the laundry basket? Have you ever said 'I fell off the wagon' about towels? You keep a list of every system that stopped. This short episode is about what that list is actually recording — and the one question to run on any hack before it goes on there. Related Episodes QUICK RESET:...

You packed it at 7am. The safe food, the same as always, because the sandwich comes home untouched and it feels like putting money in the bin. At 3:30 you open the lunchbox and it's exactly as you packed it. You've been told to hide the vegetables, stop making separate meals, she'll eat when she's hungry. None of it has worked. Dr Rachel Zabel says the question every parent walks in with — how do...

The whistle's gone, they've lost by three, and he's standing in the middle of the pitch with his socks down and his shin pads on the grass, not moving. He walks off past the handshake line, straight to you, face like thunder — they didn't pass to me, I could have won that — and he shoves your arm. And the two mums behind you stop talking. You already know what the sideline wants you to do. This ep...

You're bendy. You get dizzy when you stand up. Your periods are heavy, the headaches are worse the week before, you're constipated, you're exhausted, and your mood falls off a cliff for a few days a month. Every one of those has been looked at on its own and waved off. Your bloods came back normal, so that was that. You probably don't have seven separate conditions. Dr Ceri Cashell is an Irish GP...

You were fine at 9am. Genuinely fine. Then it's school pickup, the gates open, there are dogs and toddlers and a teacher walking towards you, and one kid starts up with let's go to the park, let's go to the park. And you hear yourself snap at someone who did nothing wrong. You didn't ignore the warning signs. You weren't getting them. That's a different problem, and it needs a different fix. Relat...

Have you ever been told your bloods are fine, it's just busy mum life, and walked out still dizzy, still flat, still carrying a headache you've had for so long you forgot it wasn't normal? Have you ever watched a friend do eight-hour days like it's nothing and quietly decided the difference must be you — that you're just weaker, and you need to suck it up? There's a reason your body keeps stopping...

Have you ever bought the perfect birthday present weeks early, felt properly pleased with yourself, and then lost it before the birthday? Filled in the form, folded the flap, put it somewhere safe on the Sunday — and by Wednesday it had gone? Renewed the passports early, put them in the safe place, and then had no idea where the safe place was? You've been told your problem is that you're disorgan...

You might be the bendy one. Or the dizzy one, the one with the headaches that never really stop, the one who reacts to food nobody else reacts to. Tired in a way sleep doesn't fix. And every time you get to a GP, you can't quite land on the same page as them. Dr Jason Lam is a GP and sports medicine registrar who spends his days on the things that get missed — hypermobility, Ehlers-Danlos, POTS, M...

There's a mum at pickup you really like. Ninety seconds every afternoon, one of those chats where you both go 'yeah, exactly' — and then the kids spill out, someone's swinging a backpack like a helicopter, someone's demanding the petrol station, and you're pulled away before you can even say goodbye. And every day you get back to the car thinking: I should have her over. We should do a barbecue. I...

From the outside, she's on top of it. Then something small happens — a cold, a bad night, one extra thing — and the whole thing collapses. And she decides the collapse is the problem. She needs to be better. More disciplined. Try harder. But the collapse isn't the problem. The collapse is information. The problem is that she's been running her whole life on a system that was never built for her br...

Your best friend leaves a box of tampons on your doorstep on the worst day of your fortnight — no fuss, no waiting around, just quietly handling the piece of the nightmare nobody else saw. And you well up. Real tears. And then you wait ten minutes to make sure she's gone before you'll even open the door, delete the thank-you you started typing, and walk off. Because you could not have said it to h...

Have you ever answered a simple question with the whole real answer — and watched the room go a particular kind of quiet? Have you ever lain awake at 2am running back one thing you said in a group chat three years ago, certain everyone clocked it the way you did? Have you ever walked out of a room having already decided you were the too-much one before anyone said a word? There's a reason your bra...

For thirty years, ADHD has had one wanted poster. Loud, can't sit still, disrupting the class, talking back — a boy. And you weren't him. So you walked past every checkpoint in your life — the GP, the teachers, the report cards, the parent-teacher nights — and nobody stopped you. Maybe someone said you were bright, you just needed to apply yourself. Maybe you got 'conscientious' on every report ca...

In the Facebook group there's a pattern that comes up again and again: the mum grows. She gets the kids assessed, she starts to recognise herself, she does the reading and the therapy and the work — and the husband lags behind. He won't consider that he's neurodivergent, or the problem is always someone else. The kids. The school. Her. And underneath it all is the question so many women are actual...

The mental load starts as the thing you can laugh about — the admin, the medal for mowing the lawn. And then, somewhere underneath it, it stops being funny. It's the sentence that comes out of your mouth before you can stop it: 'would you mind having the kids on Saturday so I can get a haircut' — asking the other parent for their own children like you're lodging annual leave with HR. It's 'they we...

**This episode is general information only and is not medical advice. If any of it applies to you, please talk it through with your own GP or psychiatrist** Have you ever walked out of a psychiatrist's office more confused than when you walked in? Not sure what just happened, whether you got a diagnosis, what you were supposed to ask, or whether the thing you were terrified of — coming across like...