Overwhelm is real in our house. I have several neurodivergent children, and every one of them is different. When they were little, figuring out how to talk to each child was a huge learning curve. Frustration could become anger quickly, and I had to learn that my tone mattered just as much as my words.
Even now that most of my kids are older teens and adults, I have to remember that. Fairness questions also bring some heavy debates in our house. LOL. That is our family’s experience, though, not a rule about every neurodivergent person.
I do not advocate for a passive home where the kids run the show. We need assertiveness and boundaries—especially boundaries. But home also needs to be a safe place for expression. My kids’ needs are different, so I do not want arbitrary rules that exist only because “that is how it is supposed to be done.”
There has been a lot of trial and error. We try a system until it works—and when it stops working, we change it. If my tone is off, my kids will literally walk away. Sometimes a topic has too much emotion attached to discuss it in the moment. Sometimes texting is perfect: everyone can think about what to say without being interrupted by the other neurodivergent people. LOL.
A pause is not always avoiding communication. In our house, it can be what makes communication possible.
What dysregulation looks like in our house
These days, my older kids are pretty good about walking away before they lose it. Even my almost-12-year-old and my 16-year-old can usually say, “I’m done,” and leave the conversation.
Honestly, most of the time now, I am the one who is frustrated and not being mindful. They can feel my energy before I notice what I am putting out. My tone may say more than my words.
When my kids were younger, overwhelm looked more like meltdowns. Time-outs used as punishment never worked well for us. What helped was time and space to find our center. And telling an overwhelmed child to “calm down” usually just pissed them off more.
My girls can argue with the best of them. LOL. But if one of my kids said they were done and walked into another room, following them was something you did at your own risk. Walking away was sometimes the most regulated choice they could make.
Children need tools to help them find their center, and we need to talk about those tools while everyone is calm. Parents have to practice, too. A systematic review found links between parents’ own regulation and how they respond to and discuss children’s emotions; it cannot tell us that any one phrase will work for every family (Edler & Valentino, 2024).
That means apologizing to our children when we lose our shit. They deserve to see an adult make a mistake, own it, and repair the relationship. We can ask, “How can I help?”—and then listen. Because sometimes what we think is helping is the exact thing pissing them off. LOL.
Why I save the lecture for later
Lecturing usually comes with a tone most people find annoying. When I am overwhelmed, that tone feels like nails on a chalkboard. My kids have told me, in their own ways, that more words are not what they need in that moment.
If the conversation is already hard, a sharper tone and a longer explanation do not make it easier to hear. I might be trying to reason with a child who needs a break first. Research reviews describe emotion regulation difficulties in some children with ADHD, but ADHD does not explain every meltdown or tell us what every child needs (van Stralen, 2016).
Take the forgotten lunch. Making a child go without lunch to teach them to remember it would leave them hungry; it would not tell us which reminder failed. I have a note on the door for my daughter’s lunch. She forgot it today. I am not even kidding. LOL. I took it to school, and now we will find a better system for both of us—because I forgot, too.
I cannot hold my children to a standard I have not reached myself. If we keep missing the same step, I want to look at the system before I reach for a lecture.
Systems instead of shame. Boundaries and accountability still belong in the conversation.
What I do in the moment
What should a parent do instead? That depends on the kiddo, but my first move is simple: Stop. Stop lecturing. Stop adding words. Pause long enough to notice whether we are both able to talk.
Most of the useful work happens before the difficult moment: agreeing on what a break looks like, finding tools that help each child regulate, and deciding how we will return to the conversation. A pause works better when nobody has to guess whether the subject has been dropped.
I am a loud, passionate talker. LOL. My kids and I came up with a question: “Are you yelling, or are you just talking passionately?” It makes me stop and think before I answer. That tiny pause helps me check my volume and my energy.
If my feelings are hurt, I might ask, “Did you mean to hurt my feelings?” What I mean is, “Hey, that hurt.” It gives us a chance to notice how the words landed and try again. If a question like that feels loaded to your child, use plainer words. The point is to find language that works for the people in your house.
Boundaries still matter
I get accused of being a passive parent—a lot. I think people assume that because I do not reprimand a child in the middle of a meltdown, there will never be a conversation later. There will be. I choose to have it when we are both levelheaded.
I am a neurospicy mama, and I get dysregulated, too. One of the hardest things I had to see was that sometimes I was overwhelming my child. I would come in hot, blindside a kid with my tone, and then treat their reaction as if it appeared out of nowhere.
Supportive parenting is not the same as having no expectations. Behavioral parent training has evidence for improving outcomes for children with ADHD and for some parent–child relationships, although that research tests structured programs, not my family’s exact way of handling a heated conversation (Doffer et al., 2023).
The boundary still exists. The hurt still needs repair. The problem still needs to be addressed. We come back to it when we can actually hear each other. Sometimes that means asking a child to take responsibility. Sometimes it means realizing that I owe them an apology first.
Regulation before reasoning is how we make room for that conversation. 💜