Episode 73: How Do I Get My Child with ADHD Ready for School Without Meltdowns?
Host: Sharon Collon
Do you get to 9am and then honestly feel like you have done a whole day already? Do you ever cry in the car after you drop your kids off to school? I know I have. If there is tension, rushing, resistance, and tears in that morning rush, then this episode is for you.
My name is Sharon Colin and I am the host of the ADHD families podcast and I am so happy that you are here. Look, many parents tell me that mornings are the hardest part of their day. They're trying, they're doing all the organizing, they're doing all of the things and yet everything seems to unravel before 9am. In fact, I used to go to bed each night and I'd like watch my kids like I'd go in there and they'd be sleeping and I'd be.
Like looking at their gorgeous angelic faces and going, know, tomorrow I'm just, I'm not going to yell like tomorrow. I'm going to be so patient. I'm going to be like, really like calm tomorrow because look at those gorgeous little faces. Anyway, the next morning I would like open my eyes to like absolute fight club. Like I once had a shower and I heard one of my sons yelling out, he's got scissors. I know the system.
And quite often I would drop my kids off at school and I would just burst into tears. Like I had done so much already. And then I'd have to back it up for work and I was just had nothing left to give. So today I want to walk you through some very small but powerful shifts that soften those school mornings for your whole family when there's ADHD in the mix. Without all the yelling, the threats, you know, the threats, I'm going to take away your iPad.
or forcing your way through overwhelm. This is a practical starting point and one that works with the brain that has ADHD and not against it. So first up, I really want to look at what is going on for our gorgeous kids in the mornings. Why is this such a tricky time of day? So here's what the morning often looks like for a child with ADHD. So first up, we're asking our child to move through a sequence of very.
Very boring tasks. Now, why is this important? The ADHD brain is wired for interest and novelty, whereas the neurotypical brain is wired for importance. So even though the neurotypical person doesn't really want to do the thing, right? Like no one wants to get up and do all those boring tasks. I don't want to do all those boring tasks, but they, they acknowledge that it is important and also their ability to sequence backwards in terms of time really helped them push through that discomfort.
And be able to get the task done. Now the same can't be said as easily for the ADHD brain, because remember it's wide for interest and novelty. So it's always going to go for what is it finds interesting. So what is new, what is interesting, what is exciting. And I can guarantee you that is not your boring tasks on your visual schedule, right? Like they are boring. We've done those a hundred times. We're a bit over that. Next, we are asking our kids to do a whole lot of transitions.
So transitions, even though they are often a little bit easier to make in the morning, they still come at a cost and they often take longer. So they're longer and they're often harder to make for people with ADHD. We get stuck in tasks. We get stuck in places because it takes us longer to get into it. And then when we get into it, we don't want to move to the next thing. So there's that as well. And then we go and we put the cherry on top and we add time pressure. So we know that the ADHD brain does not.
do great with pressure. do very well with urgency, right? Urgency has a lot of novelty, but we don't do well with pressure. I'm talking about long-term overwhelmed pressure. So there's usually one adult in the family that's holding the entire plan in their head and a child with ADHD or perhaps adult with ADHD as well who
perhaps doesn't have the skill yet to do the movie in the mind strategy. Now, what do I mean by the movie of the mind strategy? I think I've talked about this in a previous episode as well. It's where you go, okay, so I've got to go to school. So what are the tasks I've got to go for school? So in your mind, you picture what you're going to do to get out the door. A lot of people with ADHD don't do that strategy. They don't do the, they just picture themselves at school. They don't think about the steps or the sequencing that they're to have to do to get out the door and so they don't have that movie of the mind thing going on. So they're not thinking about what's coming next. And so that adult, whoever the primary caregiver is there is holding the entire plan in their head. And so that feels every time we ask our child to move on to the next step, we are kind of springing it on them because they're not aware of the plan because they're not doing that movie of the mind strategy. So importantly, that's why visuals are so important. This is the.
Like basic bread and butter. want to have a visual of what it is. It also is a visual contract. Cause I don't know about you, but I like stack tasks. I'm like, it's, you know, like it's gone out of fashion. Right. So I'll see my kids doing one thing and I'll be like, why are you there? Can you put your shoes on? And I'll stack another task in. so.
what that does when you start stacking tasks is it just tells your kids that there's no end in sight. We like our tasks with ADHD to have a definite end and that visual schedule is a visual contract that that task is ending because you're not going to add anything else. So while you're there, you're not going to do X, Y, Z. It's a visual contract. So think of it like that as well. It also helps with the sequencing and the movie of the mind by being able to visually see what those tasks are. So the visual is a very underrated strategy. Having the visual in the right.
order and having it in the right spot and zoning it with negative space and all of the things. These are the things that I love working with families to get right because it's not as simple as making a beautiful chart on Canva or purchasing them in on Etsy, sticking it up on a wall and never looking at it again. It's just visual noise then. So we need to get that bit right. And then, so we've got one parent there who's holding all the sequencing and then we've got a child who's getting tasks sprung on them. And there's the whole things that we're recapping there of having them.
being very boring tasks, lots of transitions, adding time pressure. We've got some barriers in this area. This is why it can be really intense. Okay. So we've got a few barriers going on and now we've got to think that we're rushing towards somewhere that most likely the child doesn't actually want to go. So school mornings are definitely not neutral. They are a recipe or a cocktail for a lot of intensity.
So remember, we always want to preface any strategy by thinking and remembering that no child wakes up thinking, you know what, I'm just going to stress everyone out today. You know what I'm going to do today? I'm going to make mom cry in the car again. No way. Kids don't want that. So even though some of the behaviors might lead to those things, that is definitely not the intention here. Our kids want to do well.
But something is getting in the way. So what is the barrier as an ADHD coach? I'm looking for barriers. look to remove barriers and we look to add barriers when we need to. So what is getting in the way here? So when mornings begin with those rapid instructions, come on, get dressed. We've got to eat breakfast, find your shoes, hurry up while you're there. Can you get your lunchbox? you, the brain experiences that as pressure before it has actual capacity. So what we see on the outside might look like refusal.
Or it might look like someone being difficult or at worst it might look like they're having a full scale meltdown internally. It's actually a stress response. The nervous system is trying to protect itself from too much too fast. When we really understand this morning, stop looking like a behavior problem, which I often hear people refer to it as I start talking about behavior when really it is a regulation challenge.
This is something we unpack deeply inside the roadmap coaching week. I'm having a free coaching week. really want you to come to this one. Every single family that attends is going to get their own free personalized ADHD roadmap that's been specifically targeted for their family. Do you ever wish someone would hand you a map about how to support ADHD? This is your map. You're going to get it for free, right? So we're doing this free coaching week.
I'll put a link to it in the show notes, but it's my website, thefunctionalfamily.com backslash roadmap. So really want you to sign up to that one. And every parent is going to learn how to support our gorgeous kids and be able to create sustainable change for their gorgeous family. So now let's talk about some simple shifts. So of course it starts with regulation, not demands, cause we've just identified that a lot of the challenges that happen in the morning are actually.
a regulation struggle or a regulation injury. The shift I want to offer you to today is to stop starting mornings with demands. This is so hard. This is so hard for me because I love to get things going and I'm all about action. But when we start it with demands, we are getting things off on the wrong foot. So starting with regulation and connection. Now I hear you like I'm thinking, I don't have time for that. I've got three kids, I work.
I've got cat, like I've got so many things to do. I don't have time for connection in the morning, but I'm talking about micro connections. So I'm talking about taking a couple of minutes, not hours. You do not have time for that. So before you hit them with instructions, before you start with the reminders, before you apply any time pressure, we just need to see the child in front of us. We need to have that little moment of connection. So this doesn't mean doing a whole elaborate calm ritual or...
or perfecting a beautiful routine, what it does mean is that it's just helping their nervous system to come online before we ask it to perform. Now it might look like some examples of these little micro connections is just a brief little moment where you're sitting on the end of the bed talking about something they're interested in. So how was basketball this week? You know, something that's used that interest in novelty wiring just before you start giving demands or perhaps sitting together for a minute and just.
can stare in at the clouds for a minute out the window or a cuddle or a smile or just a shared comment or just letting a child know in some way that you see them. And the next step is I really want you to name it out loud. So you can say things like, we'll do this together. Good old body doubling. It's a very, very underrated strategy or it's us against the morning today, buddy. Let's go do it. because regulation doesn't come from calm.
It comes from relationship. So we want to make sure, and I'm going to talk about this in a minute. We want to make sure that we just cement in and anchor that relationship first. So when the nervous system feels supported, the brain can access cooperation. So calm doesn't come after compliance. Calm comes before it. So we've got to regulate and chill out a little bit before we can start moving things along through those series of boring, boring tasks.
Okay. So let's do some rapid fire practical strategies that will actually help. Let's get practical. So these are the small things that reduce pressure without adding more to your plate. And I didn't want to go things that you perhaps you already know. I've gone for some different things here. So first off, we want to fuel the brain early. Protein, protein, protein, protein. if your child won't eat eggs, like mine don't usually love that, or won't have some sort of meat for breakfast, have a protein shake or
protein drink, a protein based breakfast really matters. Protein supports regulation, attention, emotional control, our blood sugar levels, all of the things we want to make sure our kids are, and often they're not eating during the day. We want to make sure that we get that protein in early in a way that your child enjoys. so that can make a noticeable difference. So go for protein. It's strategy number one. Next is position yourself as a teammate.
So call mornings what they are. There is no like magical fairy that can make mornings a great time of day when you've got kids that are struggling with all those transitions and boring tasks and all of those things. So call them what they are. Just name it. Just go, it is a sucky time of day. But instead of making it you against your child, position yourself beside them.
Okay. So we position ourselves as a teammate. Now I highly recommend this for all kids with ADHD. And I specifically recommend it if you have a child that also has ODD, like all my family members do. You do not want to put yourself in a position of us against them. You will end up in a power struggle and no one wins. All it'll do is burn everybody out. you just don't win when you're in a power struggle. So position yourself as standing as a next to your child as a teammate.
So in that regard, language matters. So you call it out. You're going, yeah, mornings are a bit of a sucky time of day. They are a bit tricky, aren't they? But you'd say things like, it's us against the morning, buddy. Like, let's do it. Let's get this, smash this morning up. Like let's, know, I kind of use language like that, that implies it's like us against the task. It's not them against me. It's them, us against the task. You can say things like, let's do this together. We'll, we'll help each other.
Podcast Engineers (13:48.494)
Uh, so you can do things like that, that really imply that you're working as a team. This immediately lowers the threat. Remember the ADHD nervous system is always scanning for safety and it lets them know that you're on their team. Next, we reduce decision-making. Now this is a ADHD strategy that is as old as time and is very hard to do, but I think it is underrated. When people say things to like lay out the clothes the night before, pack the lunches the night.
we, what we're wanting to do is to limit choices in the morning, cause the ADHD brain fatigues quickly from decisions. Now I am completely at war with this strategy and you might be too. I have two personalities. I have nighttime Sharon and I have morning Sharon. And unfortunately, nighttime Sharon is a bit of a bugger. Nighttime Sharon's like, nah, don't do lunches because we're really tired and.
Like we should just watch Netflix and you've worked hard all day and like we shouldn't do that. or she just flat out ignores the things that would be helpful for morning Sharon. morning Sharon is like, damn you nighttime Sharon. Like, you know, that packing the lunches and laying the clothes out the night before and like getting these few things right, like getting the stuff ready for sport tomorrow. They make a big difference in the morning. Like damn you nighttime Sharon for not sorting this stuff out. So.
We want to acknowledge whether you have a night time you and a morning you. know that a lot of the time that doing a little bit of prep and you might want to put a boundary around it. Maybe it's just 15 minutes. Maybe you can time yourself doing it so you can, you can really have the data. Cause in my head, like nighttime Sharon's really dramatic. So, and nighttime Sharon thinks it's going to be hours. Like I'm like, no, that takes hours. I can't do the lunches, but really like when I timed myself packing the school lunches to nine minutes.
Like do you have to be so dramatic nighttime Sharon? It was nine minutes. Like you can do nine minutes, just put on a podcast, do the bloody nine minutes. Anyway, so what we want to do is try and put maybe some time boundaries around it. Anything that's going to make it more fun, like listening to a podcast or anything that you can do before you go to bed. Because laying out the clothes, packing lunches, these sorts of things really help. And if you can't do it in the evening, if you're just too wiped in the evening,
Then that becomes a Sunday prep task. We do all of the clothes, we make sure we have enough uniforms for the whole week. We pack all of the lunches. Do you know you can freeze sandwiches guys? Like you can make sandwiches as long as they don't have lettuce on them and stuff and you can freeze them. That's fine. Or you can do my pizza muffin trick and make like a hundred pizza muffins in one go and then freeze them in little individual things or whatever your kids eat. Pack, like do it in bulk and have them ready for the week. So you can.
eliminate some of that barrier. Um, you might be able to do the same with breakfast. There was a time there where I just made like a hundred, um, you know, like the McDonald's muffins, uh, but I just did homemade like sausage and egg muffins and had those in the freezer ready to go. Really cool. Uh, but if you can't do it in the night for, and you know that that's a barrier for you, then it becomes a Sunday job or a weekend job or a day that you have capacity job. Because we know that those, these things matter. So we want to reduce.
that decision-making in the morning, less transitions, less decision-making, less conflict. Next, we want to use music as a regulator and a timer. So you might be able to say to your child and remember that kids with ADHD are going to have trouble sequencing and they also don't have any time awareness about how long things take. that can be a barrier. we're looking for potential barriers in the morning. So you might have, and I'd really encourage you to let your child choose song and
being in my house, they're probably going to choose like some sort of song that's really, I kind of know some rap song that has a thousand square words in it. Cause I think it's funny for me to be outraged at the song. Um, so one song for getting dressed, one song for breakfast, one song for the shoes. Now Alexa and Google home can really help you with this. Um, so you might be able to say like, Hey Alexa, play the shoe song.
everyone can have a turn picking a song or whatever works for you because music provides rhythm, predictability and momentum without the verbal reminders. So hopefully if you repeat that strategy, that they will associate that song with that task. Now, just like associating the song, that task, the order can matter too, because I don't know about you, but I run patterns all the time. Humans are pattern making machines. So I have a certain way that I have it, have a shower. Like I put on my, wash my face first and then I put on.
body wash and then, you know, like I, and I brush my teeth a certain way. And if I try and do it in the opposite order, this would be a great little experiment after listening to this podcast tonight, when you have your shower, try and do it in the opposite order. Gosh, it feels weird. It feels really weird. So humans run a lot of patterns and so you can actually hack that to be able to support your kids to develop new habits. So perhaps we're doing things in a similar order, a similar time.
with the song playing and that stops the constant prompting for tasks that can really be helpful too. But that is a slightly more advanced strategy there. And then the next one is to delay screens until after tasks are done. Screens flood the brain with dopamine and they have lots and lots of micro transitions.
So they feel quite good and children can even describe them as regulating at some points, but they are just lots and lots of micro transitions. So screens are part of your morning, use them after your morning tasks are done, not before. Getting kids off screens to go and do boring tasks, you're putting yourself in the firing line. It is not, it's too much of a transition from something high value to low value. So definitely use it, hold it back until after.
So inside the, our beautiful roadmap free coaching week, we help families customize these strategies so they fit your child with your household and your capacity. So I really encourage you to come along to that. So if you want to try this tomorrow morning, keep it simple, choose one or two changes, not everything. Please do not try and implement all of this. It'll burn you out. Right. We're just going to go for one or two simple shifts.
So let's protect connection first. Let's go for that first and support regulation early, reduce pressure whenever we can. Now some mornings will still be hard. Right? Do you ever have a day where you wake up and you're like, my gosh, everything's just hard today. I'm, I'm over it. Well, so do our kids. Like some days are still hard. And that doesn't mean that this isn't helping. It means nervous systems change. and we're about, we're about repetition, not perfection.
Everyone is so variable with how they feel on any given day. And I want you to pause for a moment and notice as you're going through your morning routine with your child, which part of the morning feels the hardest for your child right now? Perhaps it's getting them out of bed. Perhaps it's asking them to transition from the shower to getting dressed. Perhaps it's the part where you actually leave the house. So that awareness is your starting point. Go for that.
challenging point or that just choose one friction point and go for that first. And you know, also have a lot of grace for yourself as you navigate this stuff, because this is a really tricky thing. So if mornings have been a constant source of stress for your family, you do not have to navigate this alone. Inside my free roadmap coaching week, we focus specifically on strategies for ADHD families. You'll learn what actually works for your particular family.
You're going to learn, you're going to get your own roadmap on how to navigate ADHD in your family. We'll be talking about how to build rhythms and support regulation and also executive function skill building. You'll learn about what's behind some of the challenging friction points that families with ADHD often experience. And then you are going to customize your very own roadmap to support your beautiful family to number one, develop executive function skills.
support regulation and just take the pressure off everyone. It is so much easier to not have so much stress when you have a really clear path forward. It means that you can drown out all the people that have like lots of advice, but don't actually live this. So you can actually just be strong in what's important for your family at that time. So we're just going to go for one thing at a time. And this coaching week is really going to be able to support you to do that. You guys know I'm big on environmental changes. I love anything that buys you.
time and capacity. think that time is the most precious resource that you have and I don't want you to waste a second of it. So I want to make sure that you guys have strategies and systems to be able to support you to feel a little bit more luxurious with your time rather than you're always rushing. And then I, one of the other things that I absolutely adore is I love to help our kids.
Develop self-efficacy. want them to be able to advocate for themselves and also develop executive function skills in areas that they have challenges, but also know their strengths, know what they're good at and then go, hmm. And when they face a challenge, I wonder if there's something that I can pull across one of my strengths. If I can use one of my strengths to make this easier for myself. So this coaching week is very practical. It's compassionate and it's grounded in how ADHD nervous systems actually function.
If you can join me, please do. It's thefunctionalfamily.com backslash roadmap. If mornings have felt overwhelming, let this be your takeaway. A regulated start changes everything. Begin with connection, support the nervous system and support cooperation to grow from there. If this episode has supported you, please follow or subscribe.
And share it with someone navigating ADHD mornings too. I've got to tell you, I read every single review and I absolutely adore how kind and wonderful this beautiful community is. So thank you for being here. If you'd like guidance to put this into practice, I'd love to support you inside our free roadmap coaching week. There's a link in the show notes. Thank you for being here. 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. If you want to make this mum do a little happy dance, please leave a review on iTunes. If you would like to know more about what we do, check out thefunctionalfamily.com. I truly hope that you enjoyed this podcast and you use it to create a wonderful, effective, joyful life with your beautiful children.
