3 Pieces of Neurodivergent Parenting Wisdom I Wish I Had Learned Sooner

What I've Learned in 10 Years of Zero Chill

Photo by James Wheeler on Unsplash

Most of the lovely parenting advice and wisdom I received early on in my parenting simply did not apply to my oldest daughter. Perfectly reasonable suggestions like: to avoid power struggles with your toddler, offer a choice like “do you want the red cup or the blue cup?” (expected answer: “blue cup.” actual answer: NONE I HATE THOSE CUPS I WANT A RAINBOW CUP THAT DOESN’T EXIST AND NOW I WILL SCREAM ABOUT IT FOR AT LEAST ONE HOUR”).

My daughter is deeply intelligent, deeply sensitive, and her emotional regulation difficulties have been really hard. I’ve been embarrassed by huge meltdowns in public more times than I can count, to the point where I don’t even feel anything about them anymore really. I’m not embarrassed and I wish someone had told me early on that it’s OK to let go of the shame of having a kid who just doesn’t behave in public.

So these are some things that I wish I knew earlier on that really could have saved me a lot of angst. I’m revisiting a lot of these things because my toddler is fully in the chaos monster years and I’m handling it so much better than I did with my daughter. My daughter’s behavior is thousands of times better than it used to be; most of the behaviors I’m describing occurred during the ages of 3-7 and in the past few years she has shown amazing growth. Through implementation of reasonable consequences and rewards for literally years, as well as really nurturing the great parts of our relationship, my daughter’s behavior is actually pretty great.

But I still wish I had known these things sooner - so I’m writing all of this down in case it helps someone else who is deep in Hard Times.

Do not become emotionally invested in meltdowns, and do not be surprised by them

The embarrassment of having an ND kid who has very loud and disruptive meltdowns in public is real. I’m not trying to be harsh on ND kids; really I’m more frustrated with the judgment coming from who I assume are NT adults who look at you and your screaming child as though disdain - or outright disgust - who think they are somehow helpful.

If my embarrassment helped my kid behave better I’d have the best behaved child on earth.

It’s easy to get locked into an ineffective cycle of trying desperately to avoid meltdowns. If I just make sure my kid gets 12 hours of sleep, doesn’t have any itchy or uncomfortable clothes, is not hungry or thirsty and doesn’t get a chance to get hungry while we’re out, and isn’t surprised by anything and no plans change, everything will be fine!

I made the meltdown cycle worse by being so stressed out about making conditions perfect, and then not being able to regulate myself when the meltdown inevitably occurred. I tried so hard not to flip out when I sensed her starting to flip out, but my daughter could totally sense that I wasn’t chill, which ramped up her emotions.

I have since learned that the best reaction to a meltdown is zero reaction. Act like it is not happening. Yes, other parents are probably going to think you are weird. I know how it must look when my child is sobbing on the ground and I’m just kind of standing there, not offering any sort of comfort, basically ignoring the situation. But I wish more people understanding that ND kids often do not want comfort when they’re upset. They want to be LEFT ALONE. Interaction prolongs the meltdown.

When you go out and about, plan for the meltdown. Picture what you will ideally do if/when a meltdown happens. Picture the disdainful looks of other parents and prepare yourself be OK with it. Do not be emotionally invested in trying to prevent or ‘solve’ meltdowns. Other people have no idea what you’re going through, and that’s OK - your job isn’t to make other people understand or support you, your job is just to support your child and keep them safe.

Understanding and empathizing can co-exist with discipline and reasonable expectations

I latched onto a lot of snippets of wisdom from ADHD experts (like, “kids do well when they can do well”) because I felt like it was giving me permission not to trigger meltdowns by enforcing reasonable expectations and enacting consequences for broken rules.

Parenting an ND kid who flips out 10x harder than a typical kid when told “no” or when given a reasonable consequence for their actions is so tiring. I just so wanted ONE DAY of peace where there wasn’t an argument or screaming or crying or hitting.

My daughter’s father took an extremely harsh approach to “discipline.” It’s not really discipline so much as emotional abuse. One important factor in improving my daughter’s behavior was to get her away from that. After he told her once that she was an ‘embarrassment’ I did not allow her to be alone with him. His zero-to-100 quick to anger responses to her behaviors made things worse. He ‘grounded’ her almost every day for rule breaking (meaning, she couldn’t play outside with her neighborhood friends), essentially making it so that she was perpetually in trouble. While we are unfortunately still technically married, he has moved on to a new partner and thankfully has almost nothing to do with us. Since he has more or less removed himself from our lives, her behavior is so much better.

The system I ended up implementing that worked the best was a small white board I used to visually indicate whether or not she was allowed screentime. Literally, all this was was a whiteboard with the word “screentime” written on it, with a checkbox. By default, the checkbox is green, meaning screentime is allowed (I had other rules about screentime, like not after 6pm and not more than an hour a day, up until she turned 9 when I relaxed the rules to not after 8pm and no more than 2 hours a day).

Breaking rules (speaking rudely, hitting/throwing things, yelling, slamming doors, etc.) resulted in the checkbox turning red for “no screentime allowed.” When the screentime checkbox was red, she needed 24 consecutive hours of rule-following to earn it back. So if she tells me she hates me and throws her hairbrush at me at 10AM on a Saturday, no screentime until 10AM Sunday at the earliest, provided no rules are broken during that time. She could still play with friends, go outside, and do things that help her with her emotional regulation. She just couldn’t have any screens.

I never tried to enforce or discuss consequences during a meltdown. I would simply walk over to the white board and change the screentime box to red. When she was calm, I would try to get her to talk through what she could have done differently the next time whatever it was that triggered her meltdown, but that didn’t really start working until she was about 8. Prior to that she really couldn’t articulate or talk about her frustration without getting dysregulated again. But my goal - which I always made clear to her - was just to get her to experience hard emotions without taking it out on other people. She could cry, be upset, etc. but she couldn’t lash out at others.

I absolutely empathize with my daughter - I have ADHD too. I naturally have a lot of rejection sensitivity that made me really overreact to things when I was younger (and still to this day I struggle with rejection sensitivity). But that doesn’t mean that I can’t enforce reasonable expectations around behavior. I understand that it’s challenging for her to stay regulated. But it’s OK to motivate her to learn to regulate and to not take out her frustrations on those around her.

Buying something will (almost) never solve an ADHD problem or symptom

Oh, the money I’ve wasted on fidgets, sensory objects, organizers, toys and kits to try to prevent boredom, books, planners, chore charts and systems, digital calendars, supplements etc. The pandemic really messed up my idea of what a normal house should contain because I was so desperate to keep her busy while I tried to work from home, we just accumulated an unbelievable amount of crap.

Over the last year, I’ve thrown away about 80% of what was in my house, including all the stuff I bought to try to organize our stuff. It turns out having too much stuff is actually really overwhelming for my daughter. Now that her room is almost entirely empty except for her bed, clothes and a desk with colored pencils and paper/coloring books, she has a sanctuary she can retreat to that doesn’t feel like a chaotic mess that is impossible to keep nice and clean.

The house is now much easier to maintain and I am more chill because we aren’t constantly living in chaos, which in turn helps me stay chill. We almost never lose anything anymore because nothing can be buried in drawers or stuffed under a bed. Surfaces are easy to keep neat so a quick glance around reveals whatever phone / keys / important items are needed. The daily panic trying to find soccer shin guards or keys or whatever object that day is the Most Important Thing Ever to her has completely disappeared.

I wish I hadn’t tried to buy my way out of chaos. The only solution was to just have less.

Bonus Tip: Go Outside, Forever

One interesting side effect of having almost nothing inside our house is that we naturally go outside more. Bored? Just go outside. Let’s all go for a walk together. Let’s kick the soccer ball. Let’s chalk the sidewalk. Let’s lie on a blanket and watch the clouds go by. Go outside is almost always the answer to pretty much any problem.

I’m frustrated by the fact that it’s not safe or accepted for kids to just… be outside. I think many of the remaining ADHD difficulties my daughter has would be solved by being able to roam and explore outside whenever she wants to, but it’s not safe to do so, and I don’t always have time to take her on a bike ride or to a park or walking trail. But I do my best to make time for these things. The exercise and novelty of exploring creates the ideal conditions for my daughter to thrive, and in my experience is always worth the investment.

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