Show Notes
Friendships might be the topic that carries the most emotional weight for ADHD parents. In this episode I talk about why friendships are genuinely harder for ADHD kids, why one-on-one friendships are often easier than groups, and why so many social struggles are not a deficit in your child but a translation challenge between different kinds of brains.
I introduce the double empathy problem, talk about ADHD communication patterns that get misread like interrupting and connecting through shared stories, and explain what happens when the drive for connection intensifies in a dysregulated nervous system.
On the practical side, I share my favourite strategy for kids who feel disconnected, how to bridge from acquaintance to friend with concrete steps, and how to have conversations about unhealthy friendships. If you are lying awake worrying about whether your child has friends, this one is for you.
Mentioned in this episode: Dr. Damian Milton (the double empathy problem)
Connect with me: Instagram: @behaviourcoach
Subscribe to my newsletter so you never miss an episode!
More from The Behaviour Coach Podcast
Advocating for your ADHD kid at school is one of the most important jobs you have as their parent, and one of the most emotionally exhausting. In this episode, Erica reframes advocacy as bridging, not fighting. She shares the story of a high school student whose grade jumped two full letter grades from one small accommodation (his science teacher started emailing the lesson slides one day before class). She walks through a quick primer on IEPs, 504 plans, and informal support plans, plus her favourite categories of accommodations for the classroom environment, learning and instruction, transitions, emotional and behavioural support, and home-school communication. And she shares what to do when the school pushes back on an accommodation.
If homework in your house is a nightly battle, if the 20 minute assignment somehow takes 3 hours, if your kid was fine at school and is now falling apart at the kitchen table, this episode is for you.
If your ADHD kid is coming home from the first weeks of school completely fried, melting down over things that seem small, unable to do basic tasks they were handling fine in June, this episode is for you.
For years, I thought I was just an anxious parent around water and cars. I now know I was not anxious. My neurodivergent kids were baseline less safe. That knowing changes everything.
Summer is harder for ADHD families than we are told to expect. The structure just left. Your kid is burnt out from a school year of holding it together. You are too. Now it's two depleted nervous systems trying to navigate 10 weeks together without the scaffolding of school. If summer is hard in your house, you're not failing. This season is genuinely harder for our families. This week's episode walks through the five things that actually help: decoding what "I'm bored" really means, building boredom infrastructure that quietly does the work all summer, a real summer screen plan, how to prep summer camp counsellors so your kid can succeed, and downtime, for your kids and for you. Next week: travel with neurodivergent kids.