ADHD Mums

She mentioned a friend called Kel. That was it. That was the whole thing. Twelve seconds, and you'd filed her under no vacancy, decided your kids didn't match, and worked out she already had a Tuesday person.

Then the term ended and you didn't sign up again, and she probably has no idea any of it happened. This episode is about the forecast you make in the first few seconds, and whether it was ever true.

Related Episodes

Every RSD episode in one place → https://tr.ee/RSD

Navigating School Pick-Up & Social Settings — how ADHD and autistic mums read social situations, how neurotypical people do, and how to bridge the gap → https://adhdmums.com.au/product/surviving-school-pick-up/

📬 Listener Questions & Community

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Nine good comments in the performance review. One 'area for growth'. Three days later you can still quote the one, word for word. You couldn't name a single one of the nine.

That's ADHD rejection sensitivity, and the usual fixes don't touch it. Don't take it personally. Keep a praise folder. You've tried. There's a reason the nine never land, and it's not that you're too sensitive.

More episodes on RSD

If this one hits, listen next: Why You Can't Accept Kindness: Masking, Surface Acting and the Wall That Blocks Love In

Free Resources Available here

References

Mylett et al. (2026). Social camouflaging in adults with ADHD. Research in Neurodiversity.

McKinney et al. (2024). Camouflaging in neurodivergent and neurotypical girls. JCPP Advances.

Wicherkiewicz & Gambin (2024). Camouflaging, life satisfaction and depression in women with ADHD. J Autism Dev Disord.

Swann, De La Ronde & Hixon (1994). Authenticity and positivity in marriage and courtship. JPSP.

Kwang & Swann (2010). Do people embrace praise even when they feel unworthy? PSPR.

📬 Listener Questions & Community

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You did Pilates every week for a year. Then you bought the reformer so you'd never have to drive there again. You haven't done Pilates since.

Now there's a new idea that won't leave you alone, and it feels exactly like the last one did on day one. So how do you know if this one's real?

That's the ADHD hyperfocus question a listener sent in. She's been a teacher for 27 years. For the last few years something's been building in her: she wants to start a neurodivergent-affirming school. She's even gathered a small group who want in. But she's asking whether it's her real direction, or just another collection of ADHD ideas.

I didn't feel qualified to answer that. I've moved house more times than I'd like to admit, and I once had a magnificent pros and cons list for a move to acreage. Every reason on it was true. Two years later, we're moving back to the beach.

So I went looking for a better way to tell a hyperfocus from a real passion than checking how strongly you feel it. The feeling is where most of us go first. It's also the one thing that can't give you the answer.

There's the graveyard of hyperfocuses: the garden beds, the online course with no modules done, the podcast that got two episodes. Most of us read that pile as a verdict on our character. It might be the most useful data you've got. Then there's the advice ADHDers get about new ideas, like 'finish what you start before you start something new'. That one was never going to work for a brain that makes this many ideas.

And there are three tests to try before you quit the job, or buy the gear.

Related episodes:

• When You Keep Starting the Same Thing – And It Never Gets Finished
• Tis the Season to Overspend: ADHD Mum vs. Impulse Shopping

Free guides: I gave away 16 guides I used to charge for. Grab the one that fits at adhdmums.com.au/resources

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References

• Hoogman M, Stolte M, Baas M, Kroesbergen E. Creativity and ADHD: a review of behavioral studies, the effect of psychostimulants and neural underpinnings. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2020.
• White HA, Shah P. Uninhibited imaginations: creativity in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Personality and Individual Differences, 2006.

Mentioned in this episode:

Give away bad for biz - free resources

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You rolled forty identical socks into pairs the night before your mum arrived. Then unrolled them all on Monday.

The hack works. It's worked for six months. So why does it feel like you're getting away with something?

This Mum Hacks starts with a voice memo about forty pairs of identical white socks and ends with a confession about mine. In between: the two piles every objection from your inner critic falls into, the one question that sorts them, and why a sociologist would say you might be running your whole house like the guest toilet.

More mum hacks: The Mum Hacks collection

Free guides and printables: ADHD Mums free resources

References

Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books.

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A nurse who gives out meds all day found May's script in her glove box in July. Still in the chemist bag.

She bought the pill box with the days on the lid. Put it next to the toothbrush, like everyone says. It worked for two weeks. Then one morning she looked straight at it, and she was already in the car.

The verdict she landed on: careless with the thing that matters most.

It might not be that. Your brain files anything that never moves as background. The fridge humming. The shirt on your back. The pill box that's sat by the toothbrush for a fortnight. The filter doesn't check how much something matters. It only checks whether it changed since yesterday.

This Mum Hacks episode is about why 'next to' fades, why 'in the way' doesn't, and a quick check for when a hack that was working quietly stops.

Related Episodes

QUICK RESET: The Hallway Hook That Saved My Sanity → https://adhdmums.com.au/podcast_episode/episode-38-quick-reset-the-hallway-hook-that-saved-my-sanity/

Mum Hacks: 'I Wasn't Consistent Enough.' It Lasted Eight Months. → https://tr.ee/baskets

All the QUICK RESET episodes → https://tr.ee/quickreset

All the ADHD medication episodes → https://tr.ee/medication

Resources

A Guide to ADHD Medication → https://adhdmums.com.au/product/a-guide-to-adhd-medication/

ADHD Mums free resources → https://adhdmums.com.au/product-category/free-resources/

📬 Listener Questions & Community

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Have you ever fought for years — the waitlist, the referrals, the appointments where nobody believed you — finally got the diagnosis, and then sat in the aftermath feeling nothing? Have you ever had everyone around you exhale and tell you how relieved you must be, while you felt flat, wrung out, and grieving something you couldn't even name — and then guilty, because didn't you get exactly what you asked for?

You're not ungrateful and you're not doing it wrong. There's a real thing that happens after the diagnosis you fought for, and almost nobody warns you it's coming. Erica Lee sat in it for nine years and wrote it down.

About the Guest

Erica Lee is a Western Australian educator and mother of two neurodivergent children. She's written a memoir about parenting through diagnosis, advocacy, and the emotional adjustment that follows — the flatness, the grief, and the fight that doesn't end at the answer. She speaks candidly about what motherhood actually looks like when the expectations shift and the support systems get tested.

Find Erica Lee’s memoir, The Bond Between Us - https://hawkeyebooks.com.au/products/the-bond-between-us-a-mother-s-journey-raising-two-neurodivergent-hearts

Website: https://www.ericalee.com.au/

Instagram: @ericalee_writes.

📬 Listener Questions & Community

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Give away bad for biz - free resources

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Have you ever found the old laundry basket in the garage, full of paint tins, and couldn't say when it stopped being the laundry basket? Have you ever said 'I fell off the wagon' about towels?

You keep a list of every system that stopped. This short episode is about what that list is actually recording — and the one question to run on any hack before it goes on there.

Related Episodes

QUICK RESET: The Hallway Hook That Saved My Sanity → https://adhdmums.com.au/podcast_episode/episode-38-quick-reset-the-hallway-hook-that-saved-my-sanity/

All the QUICK RESET episodes → https://tr.ee/quickreset

Free resources

ADHD Mums free resources → https://adhdmums.com.au/product-category/free-resources/

Join the ADHD Mums Facebook group → https://facebook.com/groups/adhdmumspodcast

All episodes → https://adhdmums.captivate.fm/listen

📬 Listener Questions & Community

🎙️ Ask a Listener Question (voice)

Voice notes are preferred when possible — hearing your voice helps add context — but you’re very welcome to submit a written question instead.

Send a WhatsApp voice or written on 0403 457 313

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Mentioned in this episode:

Give away bad for biz - free resources

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You packed it at 7am. The safe food, the same as always, because the sandwich comes home untouched and it feels like putting money in the bin. At 3:30 you open the lunchbox and it's exactly as you packed it.

You've been told to hide the vegetables, stop making separate meals, she'll eat when she's hungry. None of it has worked. Dr Rachel Zabel says the question every parent walks in with — how do I get her to eat — is the wrong end of the problem.

Related Episodes

Could it be ARFID? Spotting the Signs + Why It's Not Just Fussy Eating — with Margo White → https://adhdmums.com.au/podcast_episode/episode-78-could-it-be-arfid-spotting-the-signs-why-its-not-just-fussy-eating-with-margo-white/

You've Tried Everything… They Still Won't Eat: Real Strategies for ARFID at Home → https://adhdmums.com.au/podcast_episode/episode-81-youve-tried-everything-they-still-wont-eat-real-strategies-for-arfid-at-home/

More from Dr Rachel

Dr Rachel is a PhD qualified paediatric dietitian on a mission to change the way feeding support is delivered for neurodivergent families. After struggling with feeding in her own family, she developed a responsive feeding therapy framework and resources built for the way neurodivergent kids are wired. She mentors and trains other allied health therapists in the approach, and supports families directly from her practice in Moreton Bay, Queensland, and by telehealth.

If you'd like to find out more about Rachel's Responsive Feeding approach — either for yourself or for your child's therapists — follow Rachel on social media or visit her website.

Dr Rachel's Kitchen → https://www.drrachelskitchen.com.au

Instagram → @dr.rachelskitchen → https://www.instagram.com/dr.rachelskitchen

Mentioned in this episode

Robyn Gobbel — the nervous-system approach that changed how Rachel understood feeding → https://robyngobbel.com/

Join the ADHD Mums Facebook group → https://facebook.com/groups/adhdmumspodcast

All episodes → https://adhdmums.captivate.fm/listen

📬 Listener Questions & Community

🎙️ Ask a Listener Question (voice)

Voice notes are preferred when possible — hearing your voice helps add context — but you’re very welcome to submit a written question instead.

Send a WhatsApp voice or written on 0403 457 313

All the top rated episodes sorted by topic

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Give away bad for biz - free resources

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The whistle's gone, they've lost by three, and he's standing in the middle of the pitch with his socks down and his shin pads on the grass, not moving. He walks off past the handshake line, straight to you, face like thunder — they didn't pass to me, I could have won that — and he shoves your arm. And the two mums behind you stop talking.

You already know what the sideline wants you to do. This episode is about what it costs when you do it, and what to do instead when you're standing there at 10am on a Saturday with everyone watching.

Related Episodes

Every parenting episode in one place → https://tr.ee/parenting

Every RSD episode in one place → https://tr.ee/RSD

Meltdown & Shutdown Guide — a printed guide for the meltdowns, the shutdowns, and the recovery this episode is about → https://adhdmums.com.au/product/navigating-meltdowns-strategies-for-parents/

Join the ADHD Mums Facebook group — this exact situation comes up constantly in there → https://facebook.com/groups/adhdmumspodcast

Send in a listener question — this episode came from one. WhatsApp 0403 457 313 → https://wa.me/61403457313

All episodes → https://adhdmums.captivate.fm/listen

📬 Listener Questions & Community

🎙️ Ask a Listener Question (voice)

Voice notes are preferred when possible — hearing your voice helps add context — but you’re very welcome to submit a written question instead.

Send a WhatsApp voice or written on 0403 457 313

All the top rated episodes sorted by topic

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Mentioned in this episode:

Give away bad for biz - free resources

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You're bendy. You get dizzy when you stand up. Your periods are heavy, the headaches are worse the week before, you're constipated, you're exhausted, and your mood falls off a cliff for a few days a month. Every one of those has been looked at on its own and waved off. Your bloods came back normal, so that was that.

You probably don't have seven separate conditions. Dr Ceri Cashell is an Irish GP on Sydney's Northern Beaches who has spent her career on the part of medicine nobody was taught, and she starts this episode by explaining what fake nails have to do with any of it.

Related Episodes

Every Women's Health episode in one place → https://tr.ee/womenshealth

Mentioned in this episode

Healthy Hormones — the free national community Dr Cashell co-founded with Dr Emma Harvey. There's a medically moderated community for women, and a list of clinicians who've completed their extra menopause training → https://www.healthyhormones.au/welcome — Instagram @healthy_hormones

Australian POTS Foundation — download the active stand test, and find POTS-aware practitioners → https://potsfoundation.org.au/

The Ehlers-Danlos Society — including the Beighton score, the basic hypermobility self-check → https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/

Dysautonomia International → https://www.dysautonomiainternational.org/

Dr Cashell's own books have been closed for a couple of years — Healthy Hormones is where to find a clinician.

Join the ADHD Mums Facebook group — the listener questions in this episode came from there → https://facebook.com/groups/adhdmumspodcast

All episodes → https://adhdmums.captivate.fm/listen

📬 Listener Questions & Community

🎙️ Ask a Listener Question (voice)

Voice notes are preferred when possible — hearing your voice helps add context — but you’re very welcome to submit a written question instead.

Send a WhatsApp voice or written on 0403 457 313

All the top rated episodes sorted by topic

👥 Join the ADHD Mums Facebook Group

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Mentioned in this episode:

Give away bad for biz - free resources

Free Resouces