Complicated Kids

A student can understand the assignment and still have no idea how to get themselves started. Carrie Bonnett is back on Complicated Kids, and this time we are talking about executive function in the classroom. Carrie is an executive function coach and veteran teacher, and she has a wonderfully simple definition of executive function: the brain skills that help us get important things done. That in...

When anxiety starts shaping the whole family's routines, helping the child may need to begin with supporting the parents. Dr. Lauren Siegel joins me to talk about SPACE, which stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions. It is a little different from many treatments for childhood anxiety because although the child is still the focus, the parents are the ones going to therapy and...

For some kids, the most powerful support is not one more program. It is an adult who keeps showing up. Jorie Das is the Executive Director of Friends of the Children Los Angeles, an organization doing something that immediately got my attention: pairing children who have experienced significant adversity with paid, professional mentors who make a 12-plus-year commitment to them. These are not volu...

If we spend childhood teaching a kid that adults know their body, needs, and limits better than they do, it is a pretty big leap to expect self-trust to magically appear in adulthood. Jenn Glacel is back on the podcast, and this time we are talking about what she calls radical acceptance of children's inner knowing or wisdom. Before anybody starts rolling their eyes, this is not an argument that a...

When your child needs so much from you, your relationship with your partner can quietly become one more thing that gets put on the back burner. There is always something more urgent. A school issue. An appointment. A meltdown. A sibling who also needs something. A decision that has to be made. Caron Starobin's argument in this episode is that the relationship between the adults is not separate fro...

You cannot teach your child to trust you while constantly second-guessing yourself. There is no shortage of parenting information out there. Books, podcasts, influencers, experts, schools, research, and your neighbor's cousin all have thoughts about what you should be doing with your child. And sometimes all that information makes parenting harder. In this episode, I talk with fellow parent coach...

Understanding the problem is not always the same as changing the pattern. In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Julie Lopez, founder of Viva, for a conversation about trauma, implicit memory, brain-based therapies, and why talk is not always the language the nervous system understands. Julie starts with a story from early memory research that shows something fascinating and, honestly, a little unsett...

Your child should not have to become a different kind of learner just to prove that they can learn. Dr. Emily King is back on the podcast, this time to celebrate the release of her first book, The Neurodivergent Learner . Emily is a child psychologist, former school psychologist, and parent of two neurodivergent kids, so she has spent a lot of time on pretty much every side of the school-family-pr...

You are not just invited to the IEP meeting. You are part of the team. In this episode, I'm joined by Vicki Christensen, founder of Blue Glasses Advocacy, special education advocate, and parent of two children with IEP experience, for a conversation about helping parents understand their role in the IEP process. Vicki shares that her own advocacy work began after sitting in an IEP meeting for her...

Birth is part of the story. It is not the whole story. In this episode, Emily Roper is back to talk about birth, early development, and what those first experiences may have to do with the complicated kids we are parenting later. And before we go anywhere else, we say this clearly: this is not an episode about looking back and deciding you should have done everything differently. No thank you. We...

The best college preparation may not look like college preparation at all. By the time a student gets to college, we expect them to manage syllabi, deadlines, different professors, long-term assignments, and a schedule with far less adult oversight. But the executive function skills needed to do all of that do not suddenly appear when the dorm-room key lands in their hand. In this episode, I talk...

Not speaking is not the same thing as not having something to say. In this episode, I'm joined by Elizabeth Vosseller, founder of Spelling to Communicate and Executive Director of I-ASC, the International Association for Spelling as Communication. And we are talking about communication. Not the easy kind. Not the "say what you mean with your mouth and everyone understands what is happening" kind....

The behavior may be where the struggle shows up, but it may not be where the struggle begins. When a child is melting down, struggling to focus, or having difficulty learning to read, we tend to focus on the problem directly in front of us. But there may be foundational pieces underneath that struggle that we have not considered. In this episode, I talk with Emily Roper, a Neuro-Developmental Dela...

Some kids are not unfocused. They just have not found the thing that gives their focus somewhere to go. In this episode, I'm joined by Scott Proposki, a photographer, author, business coach, and founder of the Camera Focus Method™. Scott is a former National Geographic and White House photographer, which is the kind of sentence that makes you immediately want to know more. But what I was most inte...

You can understand why your child is struggling and still be completely triggered by it. In this episode, I'm joined by Jacqi Trombley, a licensed clinical social worker, trauma specialist, and Level 2 trained IFS therapist, for a conversation about Internal Family Systems. Internal Family Systems, or IFS, is a therapy model that helps us understand the different parts inside us. Not in a "there i...

Screens are not going anywhere, which means our kids need more than rules. They need guidance. I'll be honest. This is one of those topics where people tend to have feelings. Big ones. And fair enough. Screens can be a mess. They can also be useful, regulating, connecting, necessary, and sometimes genuinely helpful, especially for neurodivergent kids. So I was glad to have this conversation with L...

Brain mapping is not about making a complicated brain average. It is about understanding what the brain is doing. In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Andrew Hill, a cognitive neuroscientist, brain mapping expert, founder of Peak Brain Institute, and author of Gifted & Tortured . And yes, we go right into the brain. Andrew talks about brain mapping, quantitative EEG, neurofeedback, and how certain p...

You do not have to be afraid of big emotions, but you do need a way to meet them. In this episode, I talk with Elizabeth Sautter about what actually helps in those moments when a child's feelings get big. Elizabeth walks us through her ABCs of big emotions framework: first assess and get curious, then balance the brain, and then move toward connection and collaboration. We talk about why behavior...

If a child is struggling to learn to read, waiting rarely makes that easier. In this episode, I talk with Faye Bankler Casell about what parents need to know when early reading is not coming together the way it should. Faye explains why reading instruction in schools can feel like a lottery system, why so many children are still being missed until third or fourth grade, and why first grade is such...

When a teen is in crisis, the behavior is not the whole message. In this conversation, I talk with Katie May about what she calls "fire feelers," kids and teens who are biologically sensitive, highly reactive, and slow to return to baseline once emotions get big. Katie explains how these kids often grow up hearing some version of "you're fine" when they are very much not fine, and how that repeate...

The shoes, backpacks, grades, and meltdowns are not the whole story. They never were. This one gave me a reason to pause and reflect. I originally thought I would do something special for episode 150, and then life happened. So here we are at episode 155, and honestly, the double fives feel like a good enough reason to pause and look back. There is no guest today. It's just me reflecting on what I...

If your child is escalating and you are escalating too, that is not a discipline problem. It is a nervous system moment. In this conversation, I talk with Eva Crawford, LCSW-C, about what somatic work actually means and why it matters so much for parents of neurodivergent kids. Eva explains how many of us are not noticing what is happening in our own bodies until we are already fully triggered, an...

You cannot teach executive function by controlling a child harder. Executive function is not just about planners, homework, and getting organized. It is about self-awareness, self-regulation, and being able to take the next step toward a goal, even when something feels hard. In this episode, I talk with Sean McCormick, founder of Executive Function Specialists, about what actually helps kids build...

Sometimes a grade becomes the whole story. A child gets a low score, forgets an assignment, melts down over homework, or seems unmotivated, and suddenly everyone is focused on performance. But in this conversation, Dr. Linda Silbert brings us back to something much more important: a struggling child is still a whole child. Grades may show that something is wrong, but they do not explain why. Gabri...

A child can need support and still have too much support. In this conversation, I talk with Casey Joseph, special educator and founder of Casey's Special Education Services, about what happens when families get handed a long list of recommendations and start trying to do all of it at once. Casey shares why "more" is not always the best answer for neurodivergent kids, especially when services start...