Jane McFadden:

Hello and welcome to the next episode of ADHD Mums. Today we have Sharon Colin back from The Functional Family. Welcome Sharon.

Sharon Collons:

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me back again.

Jane McFadden:

So we did the first episode with Sharon on relationships, which was awesome. I learned a lot about that and we had some really great results in our own relationships. So of course, I would like to get Sharon back.

So I’m going to give you a quick overview of Sharon, just in case you haven’t listened to the first one. But if you haven’t, you should go back and listen because it’s great.

So Sharon doesn’t have ADHD, but we welcome her on this podcast anyway. She has her entire family with ADHD. So she’s fully in it. I don’t know if she loves it, but she’s very well educated. She’s passionate about helping families with ADHD live functional and fun lives.

She’s used her lived experience, 13 years of research and training to support those living with ADHD. When Sharon’s first son was diagnosed with ADHD, she felt incredibly alone. There was information about how to help the child, but there’s nothing about how to support the parents or the moms for that matter, which is funny because that’s kind of the reason why this podcast started.

The journey of raising her beautiful boys with ADHD was isolating and exhausting. The stress severely affected her health. Again, that so resonates.

So Sharon realized that she was only surviving every day. She wasn’t actually thriving. And she began researching ADHD and developing systems to work with the ADHD brain.

She realized that if she changed the environment around her, she could work to her strengths and to her children’s strengths and her husband’s strengths, as opposed to trying to work towards a neurotypical family life.

Sharon’s company, The Functional Family, has assisted over 30,000 families and individuals with ADHD. She’s got online support programs and groups where parents can ask questions, connect and support each other. She does one-on-one coaching, parent mentoring. She has a blog, a podcast, a membership, and an incredible six-week online program.

Now, Sharon, I have a serious question for you. Totally not scripted, but I’ve been putting things together. Sure you don’t have ADHD? Are you sure? Because like your bio, your life, how you figure out your brain. I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t know, Sharon. I think you could be on that path.

Sharon Collons:

Nah. There’s not—it’s not the first time that it has been suggested. I definitely have traits, and my brother was diagnosed with ADHD as a child. So I, you know, look, I’m not ruling it out.

But the confusing thing for me is, and why I don’t feel like I’m ready for testing—and this is, you know, personal tangent—is because I’m on some medication for my autoimmune disease that can mimic ADHD symptoms. And so I want to wait till I’m off that to fully get tested so it’s accurate.

I don’t want to insult people that actually have ADHD and have, you know, a neurological difference by associating until I am sure.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, I think that makes sense. There’s definite markers there. Yeah, because if you came out and you said, I have ADHD as well now. And then a year later came off your medication with, no, no, I’m fine—that, yeah, that’s probably not the best thing for anybody around you.

Including your business. Because I was like, she had ADHD. She cured it. It’s like, that’s not, that’s actually not what we’re saying.

So that’s hilarious. So welcome, Sharon. Welcome back for the ride. It’s always a ride with Sharon.

Sharon Collons:

Thank you.

Jane McFadden:

So today we are doing the hot topic of parenting. So Sharon, the first question that I think is probably the most important to set up for this conversation would be around: what would be the additional challenges that a family would face having parents or kids or both having ADHD, in comparison—not that we compare, but of course we do—to a neurotypical family?

Sharon Collons:

I think the biggest challenge is actually regulation. So when you have multiple people with ADHD in the house and the parents are ADHD as well, it’s often the parent’s job to assist the child in regulating. And when you are not able to regulate yourself, or perhaps you haven’t developed those skills of emotional regulation yourself, it’s very, very challenging to be able to support a child through that.

So that would probably be the biggest difference in the way usually you have a parent in a neurotypical family that is able to do that a little bit easier. Not always, but sometimes it can be a little bit easier for those neurotypical parents to support their child through that regulation process. So that’s one of the biggest challenges in terms of regulation.

The other thing is about the intensity of life. Like I often say that our house needs to be on a TV show, a reality TV show, so people can really see what goes on. But the intensity that our family throws is a lot bigger.

And so I often say that people with ADHD are often extreme individuals. And so they live on the extremes of life. And so when you’ve got multiple people in the house with ADHD, we are definitely an extreme household.

And that can lead to burnout. It can lead to lots of other problems that perhaps other families face. So I think that it is worthwhile knowing that it’s a pretty extreme life, right? And we have to have some framework around it to make it work for us. And it is going to look a little bit different to how other people’s family life works.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah. And then I suppose, you know, I always talk on this podcast around awareness. So being aware that, you know, you may not be able to—in some ways, my family operates a lot faster and a lot more intense. I love the word intense.

I describe myself as intense and my kids are intense. A lot of the time we do operate more intensely, definitely. However, we also are the opposite in that I know that I can’t schedule that many activities.

Then often a lot of other families around me will be going from one to the other to the other. If I try and follow along, it’s like it always goes bad. So I suppose being aware would be a key thing.

The other thing is as well, like if you… I love the thing you mentioned about emotional regulation. Love that. I think it’s a little bit like blind leading the blind at times.

What would it be like if you’re triggered as well and your emotions are up and your kids are up? Like I wouldn’t even know—I don’t know where to begin with that kind of stuff.

Sharon Collons:

It’s about having tools in your tool belt. And this is my favorite thing about being an ADHD coach, right? It’s not about having a script to know what to do in these situations. It’s about having a variety of tools on your tool belt that you carry around with you to throw at problems when they come your way.

So we have a saying in our family: problems come up, we handle it. Another problem comes up, we handle it, right? Everything’s figureoutable. We can figure it out together. We just need to be open to talking to each other.

And so having little tools that you can go, okay, well, this is a problem for us. Let’s see what we could throw at it and see what sticks for us in this instance.

So, you know, things like emotional regulation—like for my husband, I’d say he definitely struggles with this, you know, and he’s trying to regulate kids who are unregulated. He knows that he needs to have a really good handle on his self-care. So he needs to be able to exercise. He needs to be able to do things that are challenging in terms of adrenaline.

You know, these sorts of things that he has to balance out so he is better at it. When he doesn’t do those things, he is way more unregulated. And so it’s knowing not just what to do in the heat of the moment and what tools to throw at it, but what you can do before the heat of the moment to actually make it easier for yourself in general.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, and then it’s funny you should say that because I think that’s such a great point—getting ahead of it. But often that’s really counteractive with the ADHD brain because sometimes we’re off on our own hyper focus, or parenting might not be—you know, you might be over it. You’re exhausted. You just like need to have a rest and the intensity of your kids.

But then you need to get ahead of where they’re at. Like that’s one of the things that I find the most taxing is the fact that you need to do that, but it’s so difficult to do.

Sharon Collons:

Mm-hmm. It is a constant balance. And I think some of that is what we address.

You know how we talked about in the last podcast, that family meeting? Being able to have open communication in those times to try and work out, okay, in the past, these things have worked for me. I know when I go walking near the beach, I am a calmer human. When I have time away from my kids, I am a calmer human.

I like spending one-on-one time with my kids better than I like spending time with all three of them, right? That makes me a better parent. So how come if we know these things usually work, these still lead us to pull that makes it happier for our family? Okay, how can I fit these in in a general way?

Because we know that at various points with this ridiculous autoimmune disease that I have and Anthony’s, you know, ADHD and burnout, we know already that we’re going to be exhausted. We can plan for exhaustion. That’s just how—what we’ve got to do is try and factor as much in, as much cushioning, as much happiness, as much time.

So like, I hate the word self-care, but you know what I mean—as much as possible as a buffer, a buffer for those incidences as well.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, it’s a great point. And you know what? I love the fact about talking to you is because I think again, not to compare, but like, you know, people do that all the time.

So a lot of like, you’ve got three, you’ve got three kids with ADHD. So do I. However, I’ve got one girl, and they present differently. And sometimes, not always, they’re a little easier to manage.

I find physically, day to day, my daughter is easier to manage, definitely. At night, getting her to go to sleep with the tears and the crying and the stomach aches and the head—fuck—that is, you know, preteen girls, especially with ADHD. That’s a whole nother game.

But I still think at the moment, the kids my age, the boys are far harder. Far harder. Just in terms of like keeping them alive, getting them to not kill each other.

And I’m not saying punching, like actually physically dying—like riding their bikes out in front of cars, like just keeping them alive. Whereas, you know, my daughter is much calmer. She’ll lay and watch, you know, we can read Harry Potter together. Those moments are a little bit easier at the moment. Later on, I don’t know.

But I suppose one of the problems my husband and I have in terms of getting time out—because the exhaustion is real, right? Especially some of this proactive parenting I’ve been doing with my middle son, who’s an absolute antagonist.

So, walks around, turns the TV off on the other kids. He’ll walk around, just do things to upset you, right? Get a brand new car, I said, there’s no eating in the car. And he opened the door and threw mud in it. That’s the kind of stuff he likes to do. So he’s very much the antagonist of our house.

And when he’s off, he’s off. So I find it quite difficult to work with. Probably the most difficult for me to parent.

But my husband and I have got this thing around exhaustion. And then like, I’m like, I’m going to go off here or I want to go for a walk. But you’re leaving the other one with like three intense kids.

And sometimes that’s a real barrier to have any time out because the other person is suffering, right? And you know they’re suffering. And you feel bad asking. But then neither of you get time out.

Sharon Collons:

That’s a constant juggle for us. And it’s something that you have to weigh up. I mean, if you’re going to take time out, you kind of got to do it with the intention of it being time out, right? And not feel bad about what you’re walking out of—that, you know, walking out and leaving them with.

On the basis that it binds you. Like I kind of—it’s like an elastic band, right? So you pull and you pull and you stretch the elastic band until you snap. And we burn out.

So we’re just buying ourselves a little bit more flexibility in that elastic band by having those moments. And whatever that looks like for you. For some people, it isn’t like, you know, completely leaving.

It might be just, you know, being able to read a book. I don’t know, whatever they enjoy. It might be able to do some crafting stuff or whatever they enjoy.

But something that gives you energy and gives you that resilience. Because it’s very, very hard to parent extreme kids when we are exhausted. Like I know myself, I can’t be a patient present parent.

I struggle with that any day of the week. But if I do it, I need that time to be able to achieve what I want to do as a parent and be that present parent. And it’s a constant juggle.

Like I think we’re all looking for that one thing that we could just—like that switch that we could flick that would make it so easy to balance this. But the truth is, it’s a constant juggle. It’s a rearranging your week, scheduling thing.

Like, you know, trying to schedule things in as a family so that it works for what we’ve got going on as a family. Not what works for other people, but what works for us.

And it’s a tricky one. It’s a tricky one. And we go in seasons, right? Like not every—I always have a saying: new levels, new devils. Like every kid’s age brings its own challenges.

And every time they get—you know, you think you’ve mastered one skill, like they’ll throw something else at you. But as problems come up, we handle it. So we’ve got to just work together to find a way forward in that situation.

Jane McFadden:

Do you parent—and it can be tricky—do you parent? Because I also want to highlight, because just like, you’re amazing. Your husband flies in, flies out as well, doesn’t he? So when we’re talking parenting, Sharon actually single parents.

Sharon Collons:

No, he’s a truck driver.

Jane McFadden:

So he’s, yeah, most of it.

Sharon Collons:

I thought you were like—

Jane McFadden:

But he’s away a lot.

Sharon Collons:

No, he’s a truckie.

Jane McFadden:

But he’s away a lot, isn’t he?

Sharon Collons:

Yeah.

Jane McFadden:

So you actually do a lot of the load on your own, a fair bit. Like in terms of some of the morning routines, drop-off, like you’re not necessarily a team the whole time. You’ve also got a fair bit of load on your shoulders.

Do you parent your three boys the same? Or do you have a different approach with each of them? They’re all quite different.

Sharon Collons:

Like how I parent, the basis of it and my values of it is the same. But they do need slightly different—like I do change my tact a little bit.

Now, say for my eldest, he is like you described before. You’re the antagonist, right? He is the one that walks around pushing everyone’s buttons. He’s got a heart of gold, but he is very much looking for a reaction.

Now, he’s a sensory seeker. So he wants me to have a big reaction. He wants his brothers to have a big reaction. So what I try and do—it’s very much harder for the boys to do this—but it’s to be very careful about the wolf that we feed.

So I give him the big reactions and the big yelling, the big eyes, the big hands for the positive. I go really—I double down on praise for him. So really big, I can’t believe he did that, because he is a sensory seeker. He wants that big reaction from me.

So we go big for the positives. I can’t believe you did that. You’re so amazing. Lots of high fives, lots of all this stuff that his body craves. But for when he does something that is a bit more, you know, like less favorable, I go small.

I lower my voice. I lower my eyes. I don’t give him big reactions for negative behaviors. Because I know that sometimes he doesn’t care whether the behavior is negative or positive. He just wants a big reaction.

It’s like he almost has to push the buttons to get it there. He wants an explosion. He’s sitting like—that’s what his body is craving. So I’m trying to divert it when it’s bad and giving very little. And when it’s big, I go big. When it’s positive, I go big.

Because I want to be able to show him that it’s not just negative—that you can get that reaction from. I want him to remember the praise. I want to mark those positive things that he’s doing as well.

Because I’m sure that boy gets a whole lot of negative feedback from school. I don’t want that to be the thing he remembers either.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, it’s a funny one, isn’t it? Because if you think of yourself back, or if you replay yourself at the end of the day, which I often do—and then, you know, you just get the mum guilt.

And you think about what you actually said to your kids, particularly that one for me, my middle son. A lot of the words would have been in the past quite negative. Stop. No. I told you before. Please don’t do that. No, no.

And then you realize how much negativity comes out of your mouth. Even though you’re feeling love for him and you know how much you love him, the actual words and messages aren’t positive a lot of the time.

And I agree with you, because I’ve noticed as well with my son, he responds incredibly well to leadership, jobs, being in charge. Like class captain for the week is always perfect. And anything that he gets in a positive run, he’s quite good for a while.

But once he’s on that negative run, it can be really difficult to find anything positive to start with, just to get him out of it. To even find not even something positive, something neutral. Like, thanks for not doing anything to upset anybody in the last two minutes.

You know, it can be hard to find those positive things. But I do feel for those kids because they probably get a lot of negativity at school and maybe from their friends. And then they come home and their mum or dad, who’s supposedly loves them most—who they probably do—can’t find anything positive to say to your own child.

And I mean, I’ve been dealing with this problem since he was two. I remember writing a journal when he was two. I had three kids under three, and I was trying to write something nice that he did back then.

So he’s six now, and it’s still a journey of trying to find something nice to say, because that can be quite hard.

Sharon Collons:

It can be tricky in those moments. You know, it’s very easy to not—like when we’re frustrated and we’re feeling completely overwhelmed by some of these behaviours. And let’s not beat around the bush, some of the behaviours are very overwhelming, right?

It can be really hard to even see those positives, even when they’re in front of us. It can be very tricky because we’re frustrated.

And I guess—I have a saying that when you look for the negative, you’ll find it. And when you look for the positive, you’ll find it. So it’s a practice of being on the lookout for the positive.

And this is a bit of a strategy too.

Jane McFadden:

Do you want to share a strategy for school? Give us a strategy, Sharon. A bit of a flag.

Sharon Collons:

Yeah. Oh, just a little idea. So sometimes, you know, if we have a child that’s going—and this can be at daycare, at school, or even at home if you want to try this—you know, they’re getting a lot of negative feedback and it’s quite, it’s meant well, but it’s a lot of corrections and it can affect their self-esteem.

One of the things that I love to do is the opposite. You know that 1990s school strategy of like a discipline book and writing down like one thing, like the stuff that they’ve done wrong every day and then go home to the parents in a communication-style book.

And the parents would go, what did you do with this? And it was like this awful parenting—like this awful school parenting strategy.

I flipped it. And I actually like the opposite. I like a praise book. So at the end of each lesson or the end of each day, whatever your school decides, or your daycare, or even at home, the teacher or the parent or the carer has to write one good thing that the child has done in that lesson or day—whatever you decide.

And so in the past, it’d be this awful book that the kid would carry around in their school bag full of all this negative crap that they’ve done, right? It’s awful. But now, with the praise book, they get a book—oh, isn’t it awful? It’s a terrible strategy.

But now they get this praise book full of all this great stuff that they’ve done. And of course they go home, talk about it. Oh my gosh, did you do that? Oh, you’re amazing.

Like it does the big reactions. And so it’s encouraging communication, but it’s also filling it up with praise for the child and having that beautiful bridge between school and home or daycare and home.

But also it’s encouraging whoever—the carer, the teacher, the parent, whatever—to look for something to write in the book. And so they start noticing things that perhaps they wouldn’t notice before because they know they’re going to have to write something in the book.

And it’s a beautiful strategy across all fronts in terms of building our kids’ self-esteem and just helping them acknowledge things that they do that is praiseworthy and is great.

Jane McFadden:

I think that’s great, because if we think about—I mean, kids are just baby humans basically, right? We’re all, our brains are similar. They’re just—we’re a little bit more developed in some areas. Sometimes I think I’m not.

Like if I’m just trying to imagine if I had a book full of everything that I’d done, right—negative—right over the last couple of years in a book that I carried around and then I show people it, I honestly think it would just negatively push me forward.

I wouldn’t even think, oh, I don’t want anything else written in the book. I’ll just keep doing it. I honestly think I would. It’s a horrifying strategy that they used to use.

But on the flip side, if you had a book of all the awesome things that you’ve done that you can discuss with, you know, like it’s a pretty cool—it’s a pretty cool thing to give our kids.

And because of the short-term memory recall and stuff, you know, and sometimes we can have a hard time remembering, and people with ADHD are very quick to move on from their successes, right? They achieve a goal and they usually go onto the next very fast. They don’t stop and mark it. They don’t celebrate it.

So this is kind of an opportunity. And this is like one of my favorite things in coaching, is to really mark those wins and strengths and celebrate them because I want them to stick out in their memory.

I want them to remember all the good things that they can do—not move on so quickly to the next goal that we don’t remember all the times that we didn’t get it wrong. We remember the times that we got it right, that we had those successes, that something came easy to us, the times that we did do, made good choices, the times that we were able to have fun and things weren’t as bad as we thought they were gonna be.

So I like that idea of highlighting.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, beautiful. Do you have any other kind of fundamental pillars that you could share? Cause I love that one. That’s just beautiful.

Sharon Collons:

Oh, thank you. Oh my goodness. What can I go for? You did want to talk about a little bit about strategies for boy life.

Jane McFadden:

Well, did you want me to share some ideas for that? I kind of need help. I did throw it out on the stories, and we had a couple of people that seemed very boy-centered around boy swearing. And I suppose boy life.

If you wanna do boy life, boy swearing, that would be sweet.

Sharon Collons:

Well, I mean, none of these strategies are specific for boys, but we’ll cover swearing in general.

Now, swearing is a really tricky one. And I want you to know that my house is no different. People with ADHD can struggle with swearing. There’s a whole host of reasons why.

So some of it can be to do with impulsivity. Some of it can be to get that reaction, right? So at some point they’ve picked up that those words cause a reaction, like people go, ooh or the monthly. Like, you know, like—so it can be some of that.

And also just being an extreme human, you feel emotions in the extreme. So when they feel rejected or they feel anger, they’re feeling things in the extreme, right? When they feel love—all of these things—they’re in the extreme.

So understand, like, I always think it’s great to give kids the context of words to—you know, when it’s appropriate to do so—but actually tell people, tell your kids what they mean. If they’re saying a rude body part or whatever, actually explain that. Cause sometimes they don’t know, they don’t understand the context in which things are said.

Sometimes like, you know, even homophobic words and things like that—they just don’t understand that it’s that. And when you explain it, they get, oh, I don’t actually want to be like the person who says that word. So explaining it—I love honesty with my kids, explaining it so they can have the information.

I also like—I want to flag that overall management of ADHD plays a role here. So when ADHD is managed and we’re working on executive functions and we’re really building those skills, that can actually affect how much swearing is happening anyway. Sometimes swearing is just that cue of frustration: I don’t have the skills yet, I’m just communicating that I don’t have the skills to cope in situation.

So obviously working on that as a general rule.

And then I love to give kids alternative words, particularly to the F word, which is featured quite heavily in my house because my husband is a truck driver after all. And I like to give them an alternative. So we say flip.

We say—you know, my kids will say, stop being a flip or flip, flip, flip, flip. It’s a great word. Can’t be misinterpreted as something else. Or they might say fricken.

Now we’ve decided on that as a family, that those things are acceptable. But it’s giving us a word that sounds a bit rough without it actually being a swear word. So we like that.

And then when it’s happening at home, if I think it’s happening to cause—to get a reaction—once again, I’m going low with my reaction. I’m not giving them a big swear word.

 

Sharon Collons:

Okay. So you might want to talk to them about how school environments are quite different. So school environments—you know, if you swear at school, there’s plenty, you know, there’s often—they’re not able to handle, and they need to be able to have, you know, they need to have their own systems in place to deal with swearing.

So you can explain to them, like there is other schools—like people have been changed to schools for kids with behavioral challenges, for kids that can’t control swearing. So just let them know that that is something that the school uses as a consequence.

We don’t want you to see that. So we know that we want to—we don’t, I don’t want to see you get to that point. So we need to be able to support you to use other words or be able to, you know, take yourself off, go and see the lady in the office if you need to regulate and have a bit of a break.

But, you know, trying as much as we can—which can be challenging in a school environment, for sure—to give them alternative ways out of, you know, of those swear words. But obviously just being really careful about our reactions when they say those things.

So there’s a few little cool strategies to try for—I’m sorry, so we’ve got, you know, understanding, explaining the context, giving them a replacement word, looking after the overall management and trying at home as much as you can to lower your reaction, not giving that, being careful of the wolf that you feed for that one.

And then also, you know, having that close relationship with the school to understand what happens—you know, what happens if this behavior keeps happening? What can we do? What can we do together to collaborate, to try and make this as easy as possible for our kids?

And I think generally kids do get it when you explain—I always try and treat my boys like they are, you know, like they have—with respect basically. I’m saying to them like, guys, I want to look after your best interests. I don’t, you know, I want to make sure that you—that people see how incredible that you guys truly are.

And sometimes swear words just get in the way of that. You know, people only hear—once you swear, people only hear the swear word. They don’t see all the cool stuff you’re saying after that. So I’m just flagging those with the boys as well.

In boy life in general, or in ADHD life, I would say I very much prioritize, especially as my boys are going into teenage years, that old saying of connection over correction. I always want them to be able to come and talk to me.

We have a rule in our house: you don’t get in trouble if you tell the truth. So we always want to be able to encourage that open, honest communication. And that, you know, I really want them to be able to talk to me.

I don’t want them to shut down on me as they become, you know, stinky teenagers that stew in their bedroom. And we’ve got relationships and girlfriends and all that sort of stuff going. So that communication piece has to be the most important.

Something I did pick up that I was doing, that I’d love to give you a bit of a strategy of—just in case it helps someone else like it’s helped me—is I was noticing, I was noticing that I was yelling all the time. Like, I was like, Xavier! Ashton! Harvey! And no one would answer.

And I was like, this is—I’ve got a, you know, a double story house. And it was just sucked walking up and down the stairs and no one would answer.

And then my husband would yell out and they would answer the first time. And I was like, oh, that’s annoying. Like, they’re not listening to me, right? Because, well, half of it’s because I have no novelty value because I’m with them all the time.

ADHD brain is based on interest, novelty. Dad is a novelty. I am not, right? So I learned that they were tuning me out, and this might be helpful.

They were tuning me out because I always yelled at them when I needed them to do something that was boring. I was like, Xavier, can you come and do the dishwasher? Right? So it was always followed by a request.

So what I do is I switched it up a little bit. So now I only yell out to say something awesome. So I go, Xavier, I love you! Oh, Xavier, you’re awesome!

So I only yell for praise now. I still yell because I don’t—the two story house and I can’t be bothered walking up the stairs all the time—but I only yell for praise. When I need them to do something, and this has taken such training on my behalf, I find them and I put my hand on their shoulder.

So I say, hey Xav, I need you to do the dishwasher. It’s just that little bit of like drawing the attention to my arm and finding him. So it’s kind of treating him how I would want to be treated in the way that if someone wants me to do the dishwasher, I’d rather them come up and see me rather than yelling at me from the bottom story.

So that’s a little bit of a personal story of how I’ve swapped it over a little bit and I only yell for praise. So I’m getting them re-sensitized to my voice by saying cool things when I’m yelling out or things that are fun, not just requests, because I am the boring mum who asks them to do all the boring jobs.

So I want to reframe that and I want to be the person that they listen to, not just the person who yells out tasks for them to do.

Jane McFadden:

I wonder if you need walkie-talkies and then you could just go, hey, Xavier, can you come and do the dishwasher—just really nicely—and you don’t even have to walk anywhere.

Because I’d like—walking up and down the stairs, that would do me in, especially if you’re trying to find one to do a job and you’re trying to put their hands—and you’re like, where are they? Like mine are always missing. I’m like, why are you so far away when I need you?

Sharon Collons:

Exactly, exactly.

Jane McFadden:

It’s those little things that I think we forget about as parents, because I’ve got so much going on in our brains. We’re thinking about, what’s gonna happen for dinner? Like, have we paid the bills? And we’ve got so many things running in our heads. So many things that we’re worried about, that we forget that we might’ve just—like, they’re not listening to us because what we legitimately have to say is pretty boring.

So I’m trying to flip it. Trying to flip it a little bit.

Yeah, I think that’s a good point though, because it’s like, if anyone sees me anywhere near my car, particularly the boys, they run. Like they sprint towards me for fear that I might leave, right? And I used to think it was because they missed me and they had separation anxiety, but I think it’s because they’re thinking, she’s gonna go somewhere and whoever’s in that car is gonna get something good.

But it’s so funny because if my husband goes anywhere near his car, like, no one blinks. No one really cares, you know, like, oh, where are you going? Like, it might be a general question. He goes, oh, I’m gonna go to Woolworths, get some food for myself.

Oh, okay, see ya. Like, no one moves. So I think I know what you mean about that novelty value. Because I’m like, I legitimately have to go and get milk only from the petrol station and I’ve got all three in the car.

And I’m like, how did this happen? Why are you all here?

Jane McFadden:

Are you the parent that buys the cool stuff?

Sharon Collons:

That’s easy. I’m the softie, that’s what I am. I’m the softie.

I am the person—I can’t say no. I’m the worst and they all know it. So I do get hit with the most requests. And any shop, any place that we go, I always have everybody in my car with fear that I might go somewhere and they might get something.

Jane McFadden:

I mean, that’s clever.

Sharon Collons:

Yeah, I mean, look, it’s not a good thing. I would love to be my husband and just go places without anyone jumping in the car with me. It’d be so much better.

But yeah, I do tend to say yes a little bit and I am a bit of a softie. But anyway, I don’t wanna change that. I am the soft one.

Jane McFadden:

Anyway, okay. What about boy life? I think it’s more challenging. How do you just survive?

Like, cause sometimes with my two boys, I just—they just completely wear me out. I don’t even understand them if I’m honest. I’m like, don’t really quite know how their brain works either. Like they’re just exhausting.

Sharon Collons:

I mean, it can be a lot. And I think how I’ve approached it is really quite different—like it’s evolved over the years.

Like I’ve been doing this and in this space for a long time now. And perhaps at the start, maybe my approach was very much on fixing everything. I was like, ah, I just have to fix them. Like, they’re the problem, gotta fix them.

And, you know, Anthony in that basket as well. But over the years, like the more I researched ADHD and the more I understand how the brain works and I recognize different behaviors coming through, I was like, oh actually, like I don’t think—and this is one of my favorite things that I get to do—is I don’t actually need fixing.

I think like what we need to do is change the environment in our home to be able to make sure everyone’s okay. And not just them, but me as well.

Because, I mean, I burnt myself out years ago and I got diagnosed with this horrific autoimmune condition. And I was faced with staring down the barrel of not being mobile, you know, like if I don’t look after myself, I’m screwed.

So I needed to, and it became very important for all of us to be able to survive. So not just me putting in infrastructure and helping the boys, but me being able to have a happy life as well. So it wasn’t just about the kids then.

Whereas at the start, it was very much about: how can I help the boys survive? How can I make sure that they have a better life than what Anthony did growing up? You know, how can I change the world for ADHD?

Now it’s all about, you know, sustainable life. Like how can we all enjoy it? Because we’re only here for such a short time. And I really wanna make sure that we can actually all have joy and fun and not suck the fun out of everything.

And that can—can there be a little bit more, you know, can we put more joy into our family life?

And some of that is about adjusting our expectations. We know the developmental delay with ADHD is 30%. So right until they get to about an age of 25, we have to adjust our expectations in terms of what our kids are capable of.

And that in itself can help increase happiness, because I think sometimes our parenting expectations are quite high. I know mine were.

And also about putting—like deciding what our family values are. Like what things are we going to stress about, and what things are we not going to stress about? What things make us happy as a family? What things do we not care about?

You know, and so it makes it very easy in those family meetings to go like, we’re gonna say yes to this, we’re gonna say no to this, because they’re not in line with our family values.

And also having good systems in place. Like that is the bit that I—by far, The Functional Family is known for, is about systems in the household.

Because I recognized that we can come in with all these high-level strategies in terms of psychology, you know, and we were doing a lot of that as a family.

But if I’m so freaking exhausted because I can’t get my kids out of the house on time, you know, and all of that sort of stuff—if that’s just grinding my gears constantly, and it’s all those little bits of friction that really suck our energy—

I mean, if I don’t have enough energy in my tank because we’ve used it fighting every single morning and I’ve dropped the kids off to school crying because they’ve been so horrific, that I don’t have enough gas in the tank to do the strategies and do all the homework that all the therapies were asking us to do, because I’m too freaking burnt out from it.

So I learned to lean very heavily on systems. And whatever that looks like for the individual family—it doesn’t, just because it works for my family doesn’t mean it’s gonna work for yours. But as a unit, coming up with those systems and knowing which ones to fall back on.

And I kind of see life like—I’m getting deep here, this is about as deep as I get—I kind of see life as like the front of a plane with all the levers and the knobs and everything like that. And, you know, all the flashing lights.

And we just know, because we’ve worked it out as a family: when one gets loose or one needs attention, we adjust that one. And then the others go out, and we adjust those ones. And we handle it. And the other ones go out, and we adjust those ones.

We know which levers to pull. But never ever do we expect for all of the facets of our life to be perfect at one time, right? We’re not looking for a one-and-done. We’re not looking for a system like, if we could just get meal planning sorted, we will be happy, you know.

Because it’s never sorted. It’s never like just, you know, once you implement a system, we’ve got to maintain it and we’ve got to look after it. And things fall by the wayside—you might get a sickness and then we pick it back up. We work out which knob needs adjusting and we pick it back up.

And then something else will fall down and we pick it back up. And that is how we kind of view life. And it’s actually refreshing because we know what things work for us and what systems we have in place to be able to support us all as a family so that we can all thrive—not just the kids, but all of us.

And when things don’t go well, we know basically like which tools to throw at it to make it work.

And that’s what I love helping families discover: what systems can they put in to be able to, you know, to be able to help streamline some of their more friction-y parts of their day to make it a little bit easier. Because life has to be a little bit easier, right?

Jane McFadden:

Oh, absolutely. So if we—I’m dying to ask you this—so what would be like one system that you think most people kind of don’t systemize, systematize, and could or should?

Sharon Collons:

Well, grocery shopping is one of them. Like I’ve got so many—like my brain is flooded with answers here.

So I know like—so anything that, a problem or a point of friction that comes up again and again, I would call a predictable problem, right? So anything that sucks a bit of your energy, something that is maybe not every time it causes you friction, but if you know that it causes you friction more than not, it’s a predictable problem, right?

So sometimes our kids throw unexpected meltdowns at us, and they’re distressing to watch, but they’re usually not the thing that sucks the life out of us. What sucks the life out of us? It’s that everyday friction.

So if you’ve got a child that’s sensory and doesn’t like to put socks on because they don’t like the way they feel, your body’s tensing before you even ask the child to put on the socks, right? Because you know, you’re anticipating. It’s a predictable problem.

Your body’s tensing and you’re guarding your body even before you talk to your child about socks, right? It’s a predictable problem. So it’s already sucking your energy before you even get there.

So something as simple as, like using my family as an example: if I have to take the four boys—my husband included here because I did watch him throw a bag of potatoes across Woolworths one day—four boys into a grocery shop, that is not a good time.

No one is going to come out of there unscathed. We are going to spend heaps of money because they’re going to want to buy everything in the shop, and there’s going to be tears and there’s going to be fighting in the hallway. I’m going to get judgey looks, like people I don’t care about, and it’s going to be awful.

So that’s a predictable problem. So I need structure so I don’t have to do that. I don’t want to do it. I’m not going to put my kids in that position. So I would do everything I can to avoid that position.

So we only shop online for everything. I don’t take them into grocery shops. And so some of that is working out the system.

How do I remember to do that? How do I make sure that we’ve got a list in place? How do I control that? Those are the systems that we put into place.

Another example is: every day when I picked up my boys from school, it would be, I’d say, hey guys, how was your day? What did you do? Blah, blah, blah. And I’d start peppering them with happy questions.

And it doesn’t matter what I would say, they wanted to start a fight with me every day. Everything was crap. Like they were just completely overwhelmed.

And I was like, oh, I missed you guys! Oh, I missed you. It was just a complete wrong mood for where they’re at. They were just holding it together because they’d been holding it in school all day.

And so I said to them, hey guys, I noticed that when I picked you up from school in the afternoons, you guys fight in the car and you’re not really happy. What can we do together to make this a little bit easier for you?

I don’t talk to them in the heat of the moment. I talk to them when they’re calm later. And I said, why do you think you’re struggling with this? And I’m collaborating with the kids because I always want my kids to have buy-in on the solutions.

Because when you have buy-in, you’re more likely to follow through on things. People with ADHD usually don’t love being told what to do. So I’m collaborating.

And it turns out, as I was discussing and coaching them through it, they were just really hungry. They don’t eat their lunch at school. They don’t eat because they don’t want to spend play time. They don’t eat all day, and they get in the car and they don’t want me to ask them any questions. They’re just hungry.

Their blood sugar is low. They just want food. And I said, well, how about when I pick you up, I make sure that instead of going for afternoon tea after, I just—I won’t talk to you and I’ll just have afternoon tea at the gate and pick up.

Like I’ll just have like a cheese and bacon roll or whatever you want, and I’ll just hand it to you. So I don’t talk to them until they leave.

So we just—we’ve worked out this strategy. And that little thing, that little adjustment of having afternoon tea before chatting has saved fistfights in the car on the way home.

It has saved them—me getting to, pulling up in the car going, oh God, I wish I didn’t pick these guys up. These guys are truly awful.

I don’t have to run that story in my head because they just eat in silence for a little while. And then once they’ve had a moment and they’ve eaten, then I can say, hey guys, give me—and this is a cute little thing as well—we either do rose-bud-thorn or we do sweet and sour.

So, because when you say, oh, how was your day? They are good. So you say, tell me your sweet and sour. And the sweet is what’s the best thing that’s happened to me today. And sour is what’s the worst thing that happened today.

Or you can do rose-bud-thorn. Rose is the good thing. Thorn is the less good thing. And the bud is the thing that you’re looking forward to tomorrow.

So it’s like people with ADHD love a bit of anticipation, right? So you’re planting that seed of anticipation there.

So those sort of simple strategies—they’re only simple—doesn’t really change too much of my life in terms of an accommodation. Cause I’m gonna have to, what’s gonna have to feed them when I get home anyway.

But changing the order and collaborating with the kids can make a big difference in terms of how much fighting and intensity it was happening for those moments. So just taking that little bit of friction out of our day, it can really help us.

Jane McFadden:

I’m a bit mind blown by that one, to be honest, because that is one of my biggest pain points, or predictable problems, that I have.

I usually do pick up. My husband drives the kids and he gets to go to work afterwards—it’s on his way—so I never really do the drop. I’m more on the pickup.

And we only live 10 minutes from school. And I haven’t seen them, and you do, you’re like, oh, I’m gonna go pick them up. And every single day it’s like, I just feel like I’m gonna go insane slowly because we’re not even out of the car park and they’re fist fighting, they’re screaming.

They just won’t get in their seats. Ask them how the day was, they just scream in reply. Then I—whatever music I’ve got on is not right.

You’re actually right there. A hundred percent looking for a fight. I hadn’t thought about it that way. I just keep thinking, why are they so mean to me?

And then even that 10-minute journey, I sometimes get out of the car and I have to go for a walk. So my husband—sometimes he’s home. And if he’s home, I don’t even come inside. I have to go walk down the street and sit down.

And that’s when I start to think to myself, wow, you’ve had them for 10 minutes. That is really sad. How can you not cope? And you’re 10 minutes in, you’ve got the whole afternoon.

So then I’m trying to like calm down from just the screaming, the barrage, the awfulness. And then by the time I come back in, there’s only a few more little things, because you’re already half full because it’s only been 10 minutes, but it’s been a horrendous 10 minutes.

And—but now I’m reflecting on it, I’m like, they pretty much climb into the pantry immediately. So I was thinking in my mind, oh, I should really have some food ready for when we get home. They’re not climbing into the pantry and a bit more prepared.

But now I’m thinking, I really need to have it in the car. And as soon as they get in, it’s just like put the music on and then feed them, because that would actually—it’s only 10 minutes, but it actually sets up the whole afternoon where I just feel like I’m going to go insane.

And it’s—then it’s only a few minutes in and you feel awful because you’re thinking, God, what kind of mother am I? We’re 10 minutes in and I can’t stand it.

Sharon Collons:

These thoughts that go around in our house. I mean, we already—I mean, our head, we already beat ourselves up so much for all of these frictions. Like, why can’t—I should be able to—you know, oh, it’s like why is this?

You know, all of these thoughts that go around, when it can be something as simple as like, here’s a cheese and bacon roll, guys.

Jane McFadden:

I was totally—and I’m thinking I could probably just give them the things that we can just shine a light on. A banana and some pretzels. Done.

That’s a really, really—well, it’s a very simple fix. It’s also very clever because I hadn’t thought of it. So I don’t want to say simple like it’s easy—I probably would have never thought of that—but I was starting to wonder what it was because we would be at a particular round or crossing or like lights right near the hospital on the Sunshine Coast, where I’d be driving.

And it would only be like, I don’t know, two or three kilometers from school, and I would be ready to jump out of the car into oncoming traffic at that point. Like that’s how nuts the car was.

So that would be a great solve for me, because by the time we get back and I start doing, you know, lunches and everything, I’m just like cooked, but I don’t know why.

So I think that is some awesome advice, actually. We might see how that goes. I might do a bit of a challenge when this episode comes out and see if we can track the mood and see if it improves or not.

Sharon Collons:

That’s right. And you know how we view everything? It’s just like an experiment, right? We just throw strategies at it and see what sticks for this family.

And the best part of working with people with ADHD—and your family included, and yourself included—is that you guys are ideas factories, right? You have incredible ideas. So we just work together as a family. We collaborate, right?

And so you go like, okay guys, this is something I can see that you struggle with. It’s a predictable problem. We’ve had it lots of times. Like, what can we do? What can we try? What can we experiment with to see if we can make this easier for you?

And the trick is to teach our kids to be predictable problem solvers, right? So that they’re looking around with confidence that they’re going to have friction their whole lives. This is life. They’re going to have things that don’t go well for them. They’re going to have predictable problems all over the shop.

So what we’re teaching them to do is to be problem solvers: okay, something’s hard for me. What can I do about it? What can I try? I can experiment. I can fail. I can get back up again. Because everything’s figureoutable. We can just work. I’ll just throw something out and see if it works.

And we’re not emotionally attached to any outcome. We’re just experimenting. We’re just trying it and seeing how it works for us as an individual, for us as a family.

And people with ADHD have the best view. They seriously do. Like I’m constantly mind blown in coaching because I listen to ideas and I think, oh my gosh, my brain would have never come up with that, but I love it. And we can do that together.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, I think one of the things with the ADHD brain is because what you’re talking about is like kind of getting ahead of the problem and then being able to reduce stress in certain areas. So having the snacks ready and then that 10-minute period might be me just listening to music, feeling quite good, which then impacts the afternoon.

Sometimes though, within the overwhelm, it’s hard to get ahead of it. But it’s kind of like training a new staff member—you never have time to train a new staff member because you never have time. But then once you train a staff member, you actually do have time. But there’s a period of a week or however long it is where it’s actually just harder.

But I think for me, I’ve had to really push through some of that, which medication has helped me. I’m very—I don’t think I’d be able to have done that without medication.

But so, because some of that stuff, like the barrier is like the time or the energy or the mental capacity sometimes, I think. And I mean, there’s this real tendency to go like, oh, I’ve forgotten for a day. I’m off that now, right? Like because ADHD is extreme thinking. So it’s like black or white. I’m on or off.

That strategy doesn’t work for me because like I forgot it, right? It’s done. We’re ruined.

Sharon Collons:

But we don’t have to think like that. It falls down, we pick it up. We just try it again or try something new. We’re not beating ourselves up about a strategy that’s not—you know, like we’re just, we’re just trying.

If we forget today, we’ll do it. We’ll try again tomorrow. We’ll put a reminder in our brain. What—how can we overcome this obstacle? Do we need a reminder? Do I need to put just—do I need to have muesli bars in the car at all times to throw at the kids when they get in the car? Like, what can I do to make this easier for myself?

It’s never ever about perfection. And there are barriers, for sure. There are things that make it more challenging.

But when the payoff is great and you can have a car trip home where you’re not wanting to run out on traffic lights, the payoff is big enough to make it worthwhile. People with ADHD can absolutely establish new habits.

There’s this, like, often a limiting belief that we can’t establish new habits. We’ve learned how to drive. We do that without thinking. That’s muscle memory.

We carry around a phone, which we never did before. We weren’t born with phones in our hands, but we do a pretty good job of carrying them around. We carry around handbags. Like these are habits that we have learned.

And people can learn new habits. It might take a little bit of repetition, but I find that generally habits, when people with ADHD form habits, they tend to stick with them for a long time. So it just takes a little bit longer in that thing.

And I think with the payoff being great, you’ve got—you know, it’s worth it. It’s worth it. If it works for your family, then the payoff is great enough to establish the habit of having something. And it might even be just having muesli bars in the car, you know, whatever works. Whatever works and whatever makes it as easy for you to do that strategy—that works for you.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, beautiful. Well, we might finish up, Sharon. I’m sure we’re going to have to do part two on this one, by the way, because I’m like really struggling to not ask any more questions.

Is there anything that you think that we’ve missed or that you want to share before we maybe finish up for part one? Because I feel like this is a big part one.

Sharon Collons:

I think we’ve covered a lot of ground today. I think that, you know, just having—I think you touched on it at the beginning in terms of the comparison with other families and things like that. Like, well, what our family’s lives are like is going to be a little bit different, right?

But I would encourage, really encourage people to maybe view it over the next couple of days—like view family life from a bit of an, like a CEO point of view. Like not in the family, but from someone who would look at it from a different point of view and think: how can we make things a little bit easier?

What can we audit? What systems can we have a look at? What parts of the day are predictable problems? What bits of friction—you know, what can we do to make it easier for ourselves?

And, you know, just be wondering. Not thinking, oh, this is so hard. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. Why am I like—why am I… You know, all of those thoughts are there, and I want you to know that I get them too.

But to move to the action bit where we go, okay, well, what can we do about it? What can we do that we stop banging our heads against this brick wall? What infrastructure can we put in? You know, maybe what support can we get? What can I do to make this easier?

Cause we’ve only—our kids are only little for a short time. And we only have our health for—you know, like we only have one body, and we have to look after our whole self as well as parents.

And, you know, and it has to be easier, and it has to be enjoyable. Not always, but as much as we can make it. So I always like for it to be a hopeful message that we can make positive changes.

And yes, it is an extreme life, but it is one that we can work towards to make it as best as it can be for all of us.

Jane McFadden:

Absolutely. And my pet hate is talking to people who are boring, and we are definitely not boring. Those who are in ADHD families—we’ve always got a nice story or we’ve got something interesting that we’ve been up to lately, whether we wanted to do it or not.

So definitely it’s not boring. And I think we’ve always seemed to live full lives.

But I thank you so much for your time, Sharon. If you’d like to get in touch with Sharon, I’m going to put all of her information in the episode notes again. Or if you’d like to get Sharon back, or you’d like me to get Sharon back, feel free to send me some DMs if there’s anything specific that you want to ask Sharon, and we can ask her back nicely and see if she says yes.

Thank you very much for your time, Sharon. I really, really appreciate it.

Sharon Collons:

So lovely talking to you again, Jane.