As parents—especially those of us managing ADHD—the daily grind feels like an Olympic-level endurance event. Every minute is spoken for, every task another thing to juggle. So, when your kid asks for help opening a stubborn lunchbox or wants you to sit with them before a maths test, it’s easy to brush it off.
But here’s the thing: these tiny moments aren’t tiny to them.
The Small Moments That Shape Everything
It starts with things that might feel trivial:
✔️ Clipping their tricky lunchbox.
✔️ Helping them spot a friend in the sea of kids at school drop-off.
✔️ Sitting beside them while their brain catastrophises a maths test.
✔️ Reassuring them they won’t actually be a social outcast forever if they come last in the cross-country race.
For us? A blip in the day.
For them? A mountain they’re asking us to help climb.
And the more we help now, the more they’ll turn to us later—when the problems get bigger, messier, and scarier.
Why Small Things Aren’t Really Small
We all want our kids to trust us. But trust isn’t built in the “big talks” or the one-off heart-to-hearts.
It’s built in the everyday moments that tell them:
“Your struggles matter to me.”
“I take you seriously.”
“You can come to me with anything.”
It’s so easy to think that small stuff ‘doesn’t matter’—if they learn early on that we dismiss the “little” things, why would they trust us with the big stuff?
If “Mum, can you help me?” is met with “Not now” too many times…
Then “Mum, I’m in trouble” might never come at all.
