Episode 87: ADHD and Big Emotions: Why the Smallest Thing Sets Them Off
Podcast Host: Sharon Collon
The toast was cut the wrong way. That's all it took. One diagonal instead of two rectangles, and the whole afternoon is gone. Tears, a slam door, a feeling so big it swallows the entire room over something that anyone else looks over something that to anyone else looks like absolutely nothing. If you've ever stood in the kitchen thinking, how is this the hill that we are dying on today?
I want you to know two things. Number one, you're not alone. And your child is not being dramatic on purpose. The feeling itself lasts only about 10 minutes, but the afternoon, though, it's gone because everyone's so exhausted. And that gap between the size of the trigger.
and the size of the reaction is one of the most confusing and exhausting parts of parenting a child with ADHD. So today we're naming exactly what's underneath it.
I'm Sharon Collon. I'm a PCC credentialed ADHD coach and parenting expert. And I'm a mum of three beautiful boys with ADHD. I've worked with over 40,000 families across Australia, and big emotions are one of the things parents ask me most about. But before we get started in today's episode,
Can you please take a moment to go and review at this podcast on Apple Podcasts? You scroll all the way down to the bottom of the ADHD Families podcast or on Spotify with the starring system. It is baffling to me that we have such high download rates, but almost no reviews. Please, please, please go and review.
It really does help this podcast reach more families and helps us continue to bring you this incredible free resource. Thank you so much.
So I want to let you know that this is not just our kids who have these big emotional reactions. I've got to tell you a funny story. once I threw out the kitchen sponge. It was a manky old kitchen sponge, and I threw it out. I put it in the bin, and it spiked a reaction that was so huge in my husband. He was like, I am not made of money, you're throwing all the kitchen sponges away.
And like, mind you, I had crashed my car the week before. And I had rung him. And of course, after asking if I was okay, he was like, yeah, no big deal. No big deal. but the sponge, was a big reaction. Car, no reaction. Didn't make any sense to me, right? Like there was no logic in it at all. so I want you to let to know that it's not just our kids who are struggling with this. We're gonna break this down today. So here's what we're doing today: we're doing three things. First, why
The emotions are so much bigger than the trigger. So you can have a little trigger like a sponge or cutting the toast wrong, and it can spark a huge reaction. And then there's this thing called RSD. Have you heard of it? Which explains a lot of the reactions that make the least amount of sense. And finally, the one tool that genuinely works right where in where, and the one tool that genuinely works when you're in the thick of it.
So stay with me because at the end I'm going to tell you what doesn't work, including one thing that almost every parent does on instinct that actually makes that storm last longer. Let's start with the size of the feeling. Here's the first thing to understand the emotion is not small, even when the trigger is. Emotional regulation is the skill that the brain builds slowly. And in children with ADHD, it develops later than it does in most of their peers.
And in children with ADHD, it develops later than it does in their peers. Now, here's a line I want you to hear really carefully because it really does matter. Researchers often describe ADHD as a delay in the brain's self-management system of several years.
You often hear about me talking about the thirty percent skills gap time of executive function.
Researchers often describe ADHD as a delay in the in the brain self-management system of several years. We've talked about that 30% gap there. And I don't like referring to it as a delay. I don't like referring to it as a gap. More think of it as executive functions are developing in their own time.
So a capable, bright 10-year-old can have the emotional breaking system of a much younger child. Perhaps their emotional breaking system is more like a six, five, six, seven-year-old. Now the intelligence has nothing to do with it. The handbrake is still under construction. And here's what that means in the actual moment. When something goes wrong, the feeling floods in fast and at full volume. A neurotypical brain has a little buffer.
a half-second pause between the feeling and the reaction. Now, not every time will they catch it, but they do have that little half-second pause. That tiny gap is where a child can catch themselves. Now, an ADHD brain doesn't get the luxury of that pause. The emotion and the explosion, they arrive together and there's no gap to catch anything. So the wrong toast isn't really about the toast.
It's the moment a nervous system that was already sitting close to being tipped over. it's the moment a nervous system that was already sitting close to the edge tipped over and the toast just happened to be standing there when it did.
For so long, I tried to explain away my kids' big big reactions. I tried to explain or downplay why they shouldn't be having that big reaction in like I was trying to measure it in proportion to what the trigger was. And I would do all this justification and this explaining about it's only toast, it's only a kitchen sponge, you know, all of these things. I would minimize what they were feeling by trying to explain it.
But what actually made things better was understanding that there was no pause. This reframe really takes the sting out of it
Because once you recognize it, you stop reacting to the feelings aimed at you. Now, there's a second piece to this, and it explains the reaction that makes the very least sense of all. It's called rejection sensitivity dysphoria or RSD. Now, I've never met a single person with ADHD who doesn't have RSD in some form. Now, let me define it plainly: RSD is an intense emotional response to real or perceived rejection, criticism, or failure.
It's very common in people with ADHD and it turns small corrections into something that feels like it feels absolutely catastrophic. So here's what that looks like. you say something completely ordinary, like can you put your shoes away?
And you get a reaction that is wildly, bafflingly out of proportion to the size of what you just asked. Hence the kitchen sponge. And here's why. Your child didn't hear a small piece of guidance. Their nervous system heard, you've got it wrong, you're in trouble, you've disappointed me. You always do that. And it landed like a physical blow. Now, this is the part I really want you to hold on to. RSD is not oversensitivity to be trained out of.
It's a wiring difference in how the brain processes perceived rejection.
So when
you can see that, the whole thing reframes. you're supporting a child for whom feedback can physically hurt. and I know where a parent's mind goes next. Does this mean I have to walk on eggshells forever? Well, no, it doesn't. You don't have to walk on eggshells.
What helps, and it helps enormously, is delivering your corrections with warmth, separating the behavior from the child and repairing quickly after it.
So a good example of a flat correction versus a warm correction.
A flat correction is you can't just leave your plate there every single time you get up from the table. A warm correction is, hey, plate's still on the table, buddy. Can you take it through for me?
Okay, so there's one more piece before we get to what to actually do. And it's the one that feels the most personal. But why does my child hold it together everywhere except for with me? This often comes up for mums in our community. and I want you to know that it is no different in my household. My children are.
The worst for me. That actually really sucks and actually stings to say. They act worse for me than they do for everybody else. We are the safest place. We have no novelty. We are there all the time. We're the ask, we're the ones that are making the most amount of demands.
So think about for your child's day. They spend the whole day managing themselves. It takes a lot to hold all this stuff in, right? For teachers, for their sports coaches, for their friends. And the management costs them. It builds up all day long. And then they get to the one person who they trust most in this world with you. And finally, the pressure gets to come off. So the big feelings land on you, usually at home, usually right at the end of the day.
And I'll be honest with you, it does not feel like a compliment at 5 p.m. with the dinner half made and everyone needing something, but it is one. The meltdown you're on the receiving end of is actually a sign that your child feels safe enough with you to fall apart. And that safety is the foundation that everything else gets built on top of. so hold that. Even when you're in the thick of it.
It's landing on you because you're the safest person in the room.
So here's a question worth sitting with. In the middle of a big emotion, is your child actually capable of hearing reason right then? Or does that conversation only ever really work once the emotion storm has passed? Sit with that one for a second.
Because almost every parent already knows the answer. and yet almost every parent, including me, still tries to reason in the middle of the storm because it feels like the responsible thing to do. It feels like good parenting.
Which brings us to the tool. The most powerful tool you have is not a phrase. It's not a consequence. It's not the perfect thing to say. It's actually your own nervous system. young children and dysregulated older ones borrow your calm before they can build their own. This has a name. It's called co-regulation.
And it's not a soft, fluffy idea. It's how the brain actually learns to settle in the long run. Your child borrows your nervous system until theirs comes back online. When you stay steady, they have something to steady themselves against. When you match the storm, you both go under.
So let me give you what this looks like in a real moment. This is one of the hardest things, particularly if you are still developing the executive function skill of emotional regulation yourself. There are five moves. The first is reduce the input, lower your voice, fewer words.
Less noise in the room. A flooded brain cannot process a lecture or a monologue, so don't deliver one. Less, not more. See how I'm slowing my pace. The second is get alongside, not in front. A calm, quiet presence regulates a child faster than an explanation you could ever give. So sit nearby,
Drop the demand and eye contact. Just be the steady thing in the room.
The third is name the feeling before you try and fix the problem. You can say something like that felt really unfair.
That felt really unfair. Now that lands, not it's just toast, because that doesn't land.
Naming the emotion actually helps the brain move through it. Trying to fix the emo the problem too early, well, that doesn't.
The fourth is wait it out. It takes 20 to 30 minutes for a brain to come down from a stress response. You cannot shortcut that. And trying to shortcut it makes it actually take longer.
fifth is do the teaching later. Once your child is calm, then you talk about what happened, not in the storm after it. Now I actually find myself having a bit of a response to this strategy. I'm like, my kids are throwing friction points every couple of minutes. How do I keep track of these things?
And the truth is that I actually use SIRI on my phone and I have a little list in my reminder app and it reminds me of what I'm keeping track of in terms of what I need to discuss through with my kids in 20 to 30 minutes. That's what I have to do, right? But over time, it becomes less and less and less because you're not navigating the same amount of emotional waves. So we actually end up facing less emotional storms.
Now, I promised you what actually doesn't work. So here is it quickly. Raising your voice doesn't work, delivering consequences in the middle of a meltdown. That's a sign to me. Whenever I do that, I'm like, she's getting desperate. I'm like, I'm taking away the iPad. I'm doing this. That's just desperate parenting, right? Like I've I've kind of forgotten the options at that point. and explaining why the reaction was too big while it's still happening. That does not work. none of it reaches a brain that is flooded.
And the instinctive one I want to flag, the one that almost all of us reach for first is explaining. We reach for reason because it felt it feels like good parenting. It feels like what we should do. It's what they do on TV. But to a flooded brain, your careful explanation is just one more bit of input, right? it's more of the exact thing that they can't process right now.
So save it. It'll land later when they can actually hear it. Here's the last thing I want you to sit with.
Big emotions aren't random either. Most families tend to have two or three moments in the day where they reliably show up. It might be the after school landing, the dinner to bath crossover, the transition to bed. And those emotional flashpoints can be planned for the same way you'd plan for any other predictable part of your day.
That's what I take families through in my free online session, the ADHD family system. In September, I'm going to be running three options of these, and we will find your family's emotional flashpoints and we'll start mapping them onto what I call a friction map. So instead of being ambushed by the same reactions over and over,
You can build some calm into the moments that you already know are coming.
It's completely free and I'm running three sessions. You can just choose which one suits you best. We've got the first of September at seven PM, the fourth of September at one PM, and the eighth of September at seven pm.
Head on over to the functionalfamily.com forward slash system. The link is in the show notes too. Remember, your calm is the tool. Everything else gets built on top of it. I'll see you in the next episode.
