Episode 69: Surviving School Holidays for ADHD Families
Podcast Host : Sharon Collon
School holidays are here! And a lot of the families that I work with are into camp, right? Then we have the families that are like, oh no, school holidays, it’s not a great time for our family.
And then we have the other families who are like, yes, love it, take the pressure off, lower demands, don’t have to do lunchboxes. But there’s one thing I think both groups have in common, and myself included, is we have a different idea of what holidays are like compared to the reality of what holidays are like. So this episode is about surviving school holidays without burning yourself out.
So every year when it comes around to school holidays, I don’t know, is there more school holidays these days than there used to be? I feel like I always picture school holidays as being time for the family. We’re going to slow down, we’re going to connect, we are going to do fun family outings together.
Kids at home that are bored and dysregulated and fighting, and I’m trying to work through, and now I’ve just got extra washing, extra shopping, extra demands on me. And are they using screens too much? Why do they have to touch each other on the lounge?
All of the things, right? And then we go and plan these fun family outings and they often end in disaster. So what I wanted to do in this episode is really talk about how to have the best game plan for the school holidays, regardless of what you’re doing, whether you’re working, whether you’ve got kids at home, whether you’re having time off, whether you’re away, whether you’re at home, this is your framework to have the best school holidays possible that suits your family.
And as with everything in the functional family, you are in the driver’s seat. As I’m going through these six strategies, you get to decide whether this suits your family. So I want to reframe school holidays.
We often think of them as a break. If you’re a parent of a child with ADHD or, like me, multiple children with ADHD, they’re not a break, they’re a structural shift. So going in and just acknowledging that is, I think, refreshing.
It’s not going to be easier. Now, I know that it’s not easier because I track my data. Data doesn’t lie.
I wear my aura ring and in a general week, Saturdays are when I am the most stressed and Sundays are when I do the most activity. So when you talk about school holidays, if we’re looking at that data, Saturdays and Sundays are usually the most intense in our household, the kids are home on those days, right? So school holidays, it would be pretty safe to say, because the kids are home for that big long extended break, we are going to have an increase of stress and we’re going to have an increase of activity.
So knowing that and reframing it as a structural shift can be helpful. So structure drops, demands actually rise on the parent, even though they might be lowering on the child, and expectations stay the same. So we still have to feed them and make sure no one dies.
That feels like a full-time job in our house, and have activities for them to do. And they still have to have clean clothes and groceries. There still needs to be food in the fridge, and all of those things. We need to make sure that we have a bit of a plan for this so that our nervous system is protected as much as possible.
It is not about thriving. It’s about staying resourced enough to get through it. So number one, we know that capacity is the starting point.
So before you even get up, make your kids breakfast, this is strategy number one. We want to look at your capacity for the day. So how are you doing?
Because your regulation is key for this, your capacity is key for this. So we’re just going to do a quick scan, and this might be a really cool post-it note for your bathroom mirror. How are you going?
How’s your energy? Is it high, low, medium? How’s your patience?
Do you feel like you’ve got a lot of patience today? How’s your sensory tolerance? How’s your mental load?
Do you feel like there’s too much coming at you today, or do you feel like you’ve got a bit of capacity for this? So we’re just doing an internal scan of those things because that gives us the information to say, okay, is it a low key day? Do we need to scale today back?
Yes, we might have planned to go to Miranda Fair and do this shop, that shop, or just have a movie day today or an iPad day today or whatever. Or is it medium? Can we go out in the morning and then spend the afternoon chilling out?
Or is it a high capacity day? We assume every day is a high capacity day and we book stuff in like a high capacity day. But no one can be on high capacity all the time.
So we can’t plan on high capacity days. So we don’t want to chase it or plan as if it’s happening. So we’re just checking in and what kind of day is it going to be today?
So when we ignore capacity, we end up being reactive. So we want to really acknowledge your own capacity for that day. So this is really matching demand to reality.
So as much as we can in our control, how can we match demand to reality? Number two. So we want to ditch the full schedule.
So I think this happens in school holidays. I’m like, oh my gosh, all of the fun things that we could be doing. I’m going to book this in for this day.
Then we’re going to go visit this person for this day. So instead of focusing on filling our schedules, let’s focus on building anchors. So the ADHD brains, they don’t necessarily need routines.
We need a flow or a rhythm, but they do like a bit of predictability. So if you think of an anchor, like if you are in a storm and the waves are crashing, it’s really intense, the anchor is just that little thing that holds everything steady. And so if you have maybe three anchors in your day, regardless of what’s going on, regardless of the structure of your day, whether you’re working or not, you have a morning anchor, a midday or afternoon anchor, and then the evening anchor.
So a morning anchor, we eat breakfast and then we kick a ball out in the backyard. We just get a little bit of nature timing. When you’re having your breakfast, you talk about what you want from the day, or perhaps you just do something simple like tracing around your little predictable points that you do every day.
So what are we looking forward to tomorrow? So remember that anchors are your port in the storm. For the brain that is very fast, having those little moments of predictability can be really helpful.
Instead of thinking about how you’re going to build out your holidays and how you’re going to do all of the things, think about how you’re going to build in your anchors and what those anchors are. What are the quickest, easiest, most sustainable ones for you to put on repeat? And everything else stays flexible.
These little moments of predictability are not pressure, they’re support. Next, we’re going to talk about strategy three, it’s about transitions. And we’re doing things differently.
Now remember that school, when your child goes to school, they have a clear structure. So they have playtime in the morning, the session one, then they go to lunch. Often kids, remember this too, we’re going to talk about this in a moment, but remember kids are often having lunch at about 11 o’clock these days.
So we need to match that and move our lunch times to earlier. And a lot of the holiday meltdowns are about that, that we’re doing different transitions and they’re actually transition injuries. Think about it like we are asking them to do lots of different things and shift gears all the time.
They’re transition injuries. So the ADHD brain needs more time to shift gears into transitions. They need more time than feels logical.
So we think we’re giving enough time for a transition, but often the child needs way more than what we think. We’ve got the traditional transition strategies of doing the countdown. So we’re not going to stop suddenly, we’re just going to shift gears.
It’s now time to move on to the next thing. Now, one of the things that people often leave out of when they’re talking about transition strategies is they need a game plan for the day. Have it written up, what the day structure is going to look like.
And just have a loose framework. It doesn’t need to have time, it doesn’t need to be mapped out to the second, it doesn’t need to be the whole holidays in advance, just that day. So we’re not springing it on them. Let them know where the transitions are going to be in advance.
Then when you do the countdown and allow them more time than you think they need, it’s not springing on them before we ask them to shift gears. Number four, behavior. So often we think of something as a behavior challenge, but really I want you to check in with HALT first.
So H-A-L-T, what that stands for is: are they hungry? Are they angry or anxious? Are they lonely, or are they tired?
Most behavior can come back to these things. Do they just need to eat? Remember that they were eating at 11 o’clock for school lunches, most of our kids are.
So bring your lunch forward earlier than feels normal. Are they just anxious about something, a bit worried about what’s coming up? Do we need to reassure them?
Do we need to spend a little bit of time sitting there and listening to what’s going on for them? Are they lonely? Do they just need a good cuddle?
Are they tired? Did they have a crap sleep last night? So remember that having that stability around food rhythm is a key here.
Number five is what to do when things go sideways, and they will because they’re home for a long time. So there’s going to be some meltdowns. Often by the time your child is in red, there’s really nothing you can do other than wait it out and ensure safety.
But if you are catching them a bit before it fully escalates into the red zone in terms of regulation, you might be able to run this reset sequence. So the first thing that we should always do when we’re running a reset sequence, when we’re trying to support our child to navigate their way or deescalate the early stages of a meltdown, you just ensure safety and you do whatever you need to do. It’s often time, and then just got to get it out.
Number one is to pause. So check in with yourself first. We need to pause.
Number two is to check halt. Are they hungry? Angry?
Anxious? Lonely? Tired?
Check that out. It often is. I can’t tell you how often it is one of those things.
Next, strategy three of the reset sequence here is to change the environment. As they are getting dysregulated, as they are screaming and everything, just grab the hand and guide them to outside. Changing the environment, even if you can’t get outside.
Outside is great. It’s a great regulator. But even if you just change rooms, sometimes we leave that feeling in that other room.
People with ADHD are usually very sensitive to their environment. So just gently move spaces. It’s a little tip that often works.
Maybe they need to do a sensory or movement reset. That’s number four. So maybe we just got to get some energy out.
Maybe we’re just going to punch the pillow. Maybe we’re going to jump on the trampoline. Maybe we are going to go on the death swing that we have in our backyard.
Maybe there’s something else that we can do to just reset and come back to what we were talking about after we’ve done this thing. Maybe it’s about connection. So reconnecting with your child.
Just giving them that eye contact if they’re comfortable with that. Spending a couple of minutes having that interest in whatever they were doing before this all kicked off. And then number six is once everyone calms things down a couple of notches, once we are regulated again, to choose the next right step.
To really work with them to work out what the next thing is. Because sometimes the next right thing isn’t going back into exactly the activity that caused them to become dysregulated in the first place. Maybe we need to go to something else first and then we can circle back around to that other thing.
I remember when there’s dysregulation in the picture, it feels like we need to do more. We need to take action. You get a nasty email from your boss and your first thing is, I’ve got to respond to that straight away.
It’s almost never the right thing to do because dysregulation loves action. But the pause, or the power of the pause, is a key fundamental strategy. Often when we pause and just think about it for a minute, the next action that we take is different. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing for a minute.
Unless safety is involved, then all bets are off. Just do what you got to do. Remember also with words, talk less.
When your child is becoming dysregulated and things are going sideways, less words the better. Keep things to the absolute minimum. Just use very, very minimal language.
It’s not your job to work out who was right or wrong or anything like that. All you’re going for is regulation and buying time. You might like to use a script like, I’m here, you’re safe, we’re just going to take a, and then we’ll come back to this after.
Any sort of script like that is really good. It’s just saying, I’m here, you’re safe, but we’re not going to handle all of this right now when we’re dysregulated. We’re buying time, we’re taking a pause.
Next up, strategy number six. What to do when regulation is game, it’s not strong. It’s so hard, but when you’re doing it day in, day out, your capacity is lower, and that’s why that step number one, that check-in, is just so important.
When you regulate as the primary caregiver, your house regulates. You are the guiding post. So have you ever noticed on the days that you’re freaking over it and you’re tired, everyone’s dysregulated, it’s like they sense your weakness and everyone’s all over the shop. It’s because you are the guiding force. So remember that you also need an SOS plan before you overload.
Checking in, that check-in in the morning, every day of school holidays, it only takes a minute. You can do it in your head. You don’t have to write stuff down. That is a key fundamental tool.
You should also have a list of guilt-free things that you do on your phone to help yourself regulate. I’ve got a list. It might be: put on a show, cancel the rest of the day. You might need to step outside.
I do this thing when I’m becoming dysregulated. I’ve got a few different dysregulation strategies. So when things are kicking off, I often go, I’m going out the backyard to have a cup of tea with the bees. I go and I make myself a cup of tea and I sit up and I stomp up there, really angry, and I sit with the bees, even though they low-key want to kill me, I sit with the bees and I drink a cup of tea.
And sometimes my kids and what they bring into the table will follow me up there. And I’ll just say to them, guys, I’m just sitting with the bees having a cup of tea. If you want, you can be here, you’re absolutely safe and welcome to be here, but you’ve got to be quiet just while I’m with the bees.
And so when things are really kicking off, I often go for a drive and sit in my car and do deep breaths by the ocean. I’m only a couple of minutes from the ocean and it’s quite nice to just take a deep breath. But a lot of the time it’s about going into the backyard, just having a moment, giving them some screen time, putting a TV on, whatever you need to do to regulate first.
Choose the easiest option that’s the most accessible for you. You’re not going to be able to be flawless in your regulation game. No family that I work with is completely regulated all the time.
It’s just not possible. And we really want to have a sustainable holiday that protects the adult nervous system first. There’s a lot of talk about helping our children regulate and co-regulation and everything.
I would actually say that the adult being able to support their nervous system first is more important. And I think that having those strategies in a list on your phone, because when you’re dysregulated you won’t remember them. So I wanted to wrap up this by giving you a couple of free resources so that you can do what feels right for you in this holiday.
If you’re interested in diving even more deeper into this and joining us for a week of free training in March, first week of March, I’m going to be doing free parent workshops. We’re going to be doing one workshop every day for four days. There’s going to be cash prizes and workbooks and an action step.
It’s going to be truly amazing in terms of getting practical support for your family. And also I have a decluttering checklist. So if you’re like me and you are sensitive to your environment, I’ve got a free decluttering checklist.
Even though there is lots flying around for our family, decluttering things or creating at least some of the space in the house that you feel good about can be really helpful. And I also have a start the year right checklist. Now these are the things that I do in January every year.
I book stuff in for the whole year because I know when it comes to, especially when it comes to regulation. So I’ve got a few very key intentional actions that I take in January that make the year a lot easier for me. So I start the year right and so I’ve got a checklist for you and to give you some ideas of what those things are.
So you can go through that checklist or customize it to be your own checklist for things that are important to you. I hope that has allowed you to absorb a few strategies and take one or two things away that is going to help you survive the school holidays. Remember that your family doesn’t have to look like anyone else.
You get to do your family your way. It’s just about working out what is going to have the school holidays is going to serve your family. What points allow your family to shine?
So whatever that looks like, whether it’s spending more time outside, whether it’s lowering demand and doing less family activities and more one-on-one activities, whether you’re working through or holidaying or whatever you’re doing, I’m wishing you the best school holidays ever and I really want you to enjoy this structural shift with your kids, and by doing that and taking these six intentional action steps, you will do just that. I hope you are having a great day.
Podcast Host : Sharon Collon
Thank you for listening to this episode of the ADHD Families Podcast. If you loved it, please share it on your socials. I want this to start a conversation about ADHD.
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