Quick Wins for ADHD Moms - Short Episodes, Real Solutions for Burnout and Overwhelm

What is your biggest challenge with ADHD?

Some days you are on fire. The next day you cannot find your keys. So which one is the real you?

Dr. Aaron Dodini is a licensed clinical psychologist and the founder of Axon ADHD. In week four of our October series, we take on the question that split our comments in half: is ADHD a superpower or a disability?

In this episode:

• The quick win: keep disposable toothbrushes in your bag, your car, and your kids' backpacks.
• Why Dr. Dodini's answer to superpower or disability is yes, and why it changes with circumstance, personality, and environment.
• Why ADHD is perpetual and episodic, and why that makes it so hard to know if you are brilliant or lazy.
• What happens to a high achiever's identity when she hits the wall and gets diagnosed later in life.
• The "good kid" in an ADHD family, and why the same brain can look completely different in two sisters.
• Why accommodations at work and home should fit the whole person, including whether you are an introvert or an extrovert.
• Margin, community, and why Dr. Dodini believes humans are wired for growth.

Learn more about the podcast:

Follow the ADHD Mom (Jess):
 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quickwinsadhdmoms
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicalynnlewis/
X: https://x.com/jesslewisvoice
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@quickwinsADHDmoms
Website: https://theadhdmom.com/

Resources Mentioned:

Find Dr. Dodini and get evaluated at axonadhd.com.

• Axon ADHD: axonadhd.com
• Dr. Aaron Dodini: dodini.com/dr-aaron-dodini
• LinkedIn: Dr. Aaron Dodini
• ADHD in Professionals by Dr. Jennie Byrne
• Week one: What Is ADHD, and How Do You Get Diagnosed with Dr. Aaron Dodini
• Week two: ADHD, Anxiety, and Depression: How to Tell What Is Going On with Dr. Aaron Dodini
• Week three: What Keeps You from Getting an ADHD Diagnosis with Dr. Aaron Dodini

For more articles and free resources for ADHD moms, visit theadhdmom.com.

Support the show

Loved this episode? Here's your next step.

✅ Grab the Starter Bundle: Dopamine Hit List + More — click here for your free reset toolkit for the ADHD mom brain

Quick Wins for ADHD Moms is a podcast for smart, high-functioning moms with ADHD who are tired of systems that don't work. Practical resets for ADHD burnout, mental overload, and everyday mom life. Find every episode at theADHDmom.com.

What is your biggest challenge with ADHD?

You know something is off. You have known for a while. And you have not made the call yet.

Dr. Aaron Dodini is a licensed clinical psychologist behind Axon ADHD. In week three of our October series, he explains what keeps parents from seeking an ADHD diagnosis and what treatment can look like once you have answers.

In this episode:

• The quick win: put a break on your own calendar before there is a crisis, even a walk with a friend where the kids are off the table.
• The reasons we wait: labels, guilt, medication worries, "I turned out fine," and the fear that a diagnosis becomes an excuse. Dr. Dodini says most of them are self protective.
• Why rejection sensitivity makes it harder to ask for help.
• Why anxiety and ADHD can look alike, why they can show up together, and why treatment differs.
• How he explains stimulant and non-stimulant options, and why he calls ADHD a brain type rather than something to cure.
• What can sit alongside or beyond medication: coaching, group support, body doubling, and repeatable systems.

Dr. Dodini's message to ADHD moms: the reasons we wait are human. Naming them is where moving starts.

This episode is for education, not medical advice. Talk with your own provider about treatment.

Learn more about the podcast:

Follow the ADHD Mom (Jess):
 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quickwinsadhdmoms
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicalynnlewis/
X: https://x.com/jesslewisvoice
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@quickwinsADHDmoms
Website: https://theadhdmom.com/

Resources Mentioned:

Find Dr. Dodini and get evaluated at axonadhd.com.

• Axon ADHD: axonadhd.com
• Dr. Aaron Dodini: dodini.com/dr-aaron-dodini
• LinkedIn: Dr. Aaron Dodini
• Week one: What Is ADHD, and How Do You Get Diagnosed with Dr. Aaron Dodini
• Week two: ADHD, Anxiety, and Depression: How to Tell What Is Going On with Dr. Aaron Dodini

For more articles and free resources for ADHD moms, visit theadhdmom.com.

Support the show

Loved this episode? Here's your next step.

✅ Grab the Starter Bundle: Dopamine Hit List + More — click here for your free reset toolkit for the ADHD mom brain

Quick Wins for ADHD Moms is a podcast for smart, high-functioning moms with ADHD who are tired of systems that don't work. Practical resets for ADHD burnout, mental overload, and everyday mom life. Find every episode at theADHDmom.com.

What is your biggest challenge with ADHD?

You have been told it is anxiety. Or depression. Or just being a mom. And the answer still does not fit.

Dr. Aaron Dodini is a licensed clinical psychologist behind Axon ADHD. In week two of our October series, he helps sort out what is ADHD, what is not, and what to do when it is more than one thing.

In this episode:

• The quick win: a few burpees or jumping jacks right before a task you keep avoiding.
• Why anxiety and depression show up so often alongside ADHD, and how unpredictable days can create anxiety on their own.
• How movement during a 20 minute test can tell the two apart: anxious movement soothes, ADHD movement stimulates.
• Why one family can have very different presentations, from the child who holds it all in to the one climbing the flagpole.
• Why objective data can replace second guessing.
• Why community matters, and why ADHD can be so isolating.

Dr. Dodini's message to ADHD moms: you do not have to trust just your own intuition, and you do not have to do this alone.

This episode is for education, not medical advice.

Learn more about the podcast:

Follow the ADHD Mom (Jess):
 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quickwinsadhdmoms
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicalynnlewis/
X: https://x.com/jesslewisvoice
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@quickwinsADHDmoms
Website: https://theadhdmom.com/

Resources Mentioned:

Find Dr. Dodini and get evaluated at axonadhd.com.

• Axon ADHD: axonadhd.com
• Dr. Aaron Dodini: dodini.com/dr-aaron-dodini
• LinkedIn: Dr. Aaron Dodini
• Impact Parents (organization run by a colleague of Dr. Dodini): link to confirm
• Week one: What Is ADHD, and How Do You Get Diagnosed with Dr. Aaron Dodini

For more articles and free resources for ADHD moms, visit theadhdmom.com.

Support the show

Loved this episode? Here's your next step.

✅ Grab the Starter Bundle: Dopamine Hit List + More — click here for your free reset toolkit for the ADHD mom brain

Quick Wins for ADHD Moms is a podcast for smart, high-functioning moms with ADHD who are tired of systems that don't work. Practical resets for ADHD burnout, mental overload, and everyday mom life. Find every episode at theADHDmom.com.

What is your biggest challenge with ADHD?

Your child gets evaluated. You sit down with the questionnaire. Somewhere around question six, you realize you are answering it about yourself.

Dr. Aaron Dodini has heard that story for years. He is a licensed clinical psychologist behind Axon ADHD, and he has spent the last fifteen years helping people get clear answers about ADHD, especially adults. He also missed it in his own daughter, a valedictorian, after more than a decade of doing ADHD evaluations.

In this episode:

• The quick win: "Yes, we can." Why answers, clarity, and help are within reach.
• How Dr. Dodini went from marriage and family therapy to clinical psychology to ADHD evaluations, and why adults became his focus.
• The story of missing ADHD in his own daughter, and what masking looks like from a parent's side.
• Why procrastination and distractibility can be impulsivity, which he defines as sensitivity and reactivity to stimuli, and where rejection sensitivity fits.
• Why the traditional evaluation route can stretch to six months and cost $3,500 to $6,000 in the D.C. area, and why he says those tests are built to find learning disabilities, not ADHD.
• What an evaluation with objective data looks like: a 20 minute QbCheck test, a clinical interview, and questionnaires about how ADHD affects daily life.

Dr. Dodini's message to ADHD moms: the hard part is recognizing you might need an evaluation. The process itself does not have to be hard.

This episode is for education, not medical advice.

Learn more about the podcast:

Follow the ADHD Mom (Jess):
 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quickwinsadhdmoms
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicalynnlewis/
X: https://x.com/jesslewisvoice
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@quickwinsADHDmoms
Website: https://theadhdmom.com/

Resources Mentioned:

Find Dr. Dodini and get evaluated at axonadhd.com.

• Axon ADHD: axonadhd.com
• Dr. Aaron Dodini: dodini.com/dr-aaron-dodini
• LinkedIn: Dr. Aaron Dodini
• Related post: The ADHD Diagnosis System Is Broken. It's Time to Redesign It.

For more articles and free resources for ADHD moms, visit theadhdmom.com.

Support the show

Loved this episode? Here's your next step.

✅ Grab the Starter Bundle: Dopamine Hit List + More — click here for your free reset toolkit for the ADHD mom brain

Quick Wins for ADHD Moms is a podcast for smart, high-functioning moms with ADHD who are tired of systems that don't work. Practical resets for ADHD burnout, mental overload, and everyday mom life. Find every episode at theADHDmom.com.

What is your biggest challenge with ADHD?

You went to the doctor. You said you were tired. They ran your labs. Everything came back "within range." And you still feel terrible.

Hali Laricey has heard this story so many times she built her practice around it. Hali is a Certified Functional Wellness Practitioner who helps women uncover the root causes behind the symptoms they have been told are normal. Brain fog. Exhaustion. Gut issues. The nervous system overwhelm that so many ADHD moms know from the inside out.

In this episode:

• The quick win: a deliberate, deep breath when the overwhelm starts. Count to four, hold, exhale. It is not benign. It is your nervous system getting a reset.
• The CBC with differential and three specific markers (neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes) that reveal hidden infections, viral load, and chronic inflammation most doctors don't read for.
• Why the standard lab range is built around population averages, and what optimal actually looks like.
• The gut-brain-immune axis and why ADHD symptoms get worse when the gut is depleted.
• Vitamin D's real target (eighty or above), the cofactors most supplements miss, and why a Costco bottle alone may do nothing.
• Why Hali stopped being polite about "adrenal fatigue isn't a real thing" after she found it in her own labs.

Hali's message to ADHD moms is the one we all need to hear: you are not crazy, you are not lazy, and your body has been trying to tell you something specific. This episode hands you the vocabulary to listen.

Learn more about the podcast:

Follow the ADHD Mom (Jess):
 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quickwinsadhdmoms
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicalynnlewis/
X: https://x.com/jesslewisvoice
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@quickwinsADHDmoms
Website: https://theadhdmom.com/

Resources Mentioned:

Find Hali at halilaricey.com. Download her Dream Labs List (add fasting insulin and ferritin) and book a personalized lab review with her.

• halilaricey.com
• Facebook: functionalwellnesswithhali
• YouTube: @FunctionalWellnesswithHali
• Instagram: @functionalwellnesswithhali
• Guest freebie: halilaricey.com/labs (Dream Labs List)

For more articles and free resources for ADHD moms, visit theadhdmom.com.

Support the show

Loved this episode? Here's your next step.

✅ Grab the Starter Bundle: Dopamine Hit List + More — click here for your free reset toolkit for the ADHD mom brain

Quick Wins for ADHD Moms is a podcast for smart, high-functioning moms with ADHD who are tired of systems that don't work. Practical resets for ADHD burnout, mental overload, and everyday mom life. Find every episode at theADHDmom.com.

What is your biggest challenge with ADHD?

Memory is not a system. For ADHD brains especially, treating it like one is where things fall apart.

Alexis Haselberger is a time management, productivity, and stress reduction coach with ADHD who has taught over 240,000 people to work with their brains instead of against them. Her clients include teams at Google, Lyft, Workday, Capital One, and Upwork. Her approach was built on a lifetime of figuring out what actually works for brains like ours.

In this episode:

The quick win: stop relying on memory entirely. Write down everything, every time, no exceptions

Why high, medium, and low priority labels are mostly meaningless, and what to do instead

The Someday/Maybe list: how to get aspirational ideas out of your head without losing them forever

Why task realism (matching your list to your actual available time) changes how you feel at the end of every day

How to keep your goals visible so they actually influence your decisions

Why ADHD brains need to expect that systems will stop working, and why that is not a failure

Good enough is not settling. It is a strategy.

Alexis has a practical, honest approach that does not ask you to become a different kind of person. It asks you to build systems around the person you already are.

Learn more about the podcast:

Follow the ADHD Mom (Jess):
 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quickwinsadhdmoms
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicalynnlewis/
X: https://x.com/jesslewisvoice
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@quickwinsADHDmoms
Website: https://theadhdmom.com/

Resources Mentioned:

Find Alexis at alexishaselberger.com and her free distraction action plan for ADHD brains.

Website & Social Media:

• alexishaselberger.com
• Instagram: @do.more.stress.less
• YouTube: youtube.com/c/domorestressless
• TikTok: @do.more.stress.less
• Facebook: @domorestressless
• Free resources: Working Parents Survival Guide | Distraction Action Plan

For more articles and free resources for ADHD moms, visit theadhdmom.com

Support the show

Loved this episode? Here's your next step.

✅ Grab the Starter Bundle: Dopamine Hit List + More — click here for your free reset toolkit for the ADHD mom brain

Quick Wins for ADHD Moms is a podcast for smart, high-functioning moms with ADHD who are tired of systems that don't work. Practical resets for ADHD burnout, mental overload, and everyday mom life. Find every episode at theADHDmom.com.

What is your biggest challenge with ADHD?

You've tried the strategies. You've read the books. You've managed the behaviors. And the chaos is still winning.

What if the problem isn't the behavior at all? What if it starts somewhere else entirely?

Dana Kay is the founder of the ADHD Thrive Institute, a board-certified health and nutrition practitioner, and a mom who watched her five-year-old get prescribed a fourth medication before she decided there had to be another way. Today she walks us through the gut-brain connection, what functional lab testing actually shows about ADHD kids, and the one small rule your whole family can start with today.

In this episode:

The quick win: the "no naked carb" rule and why blood sugar stability changes everything for ADHD brains

Why 95% of serotonin and 50% of dopamine are produced in the gut, not the brain

How a compromised gut sends inflammatory signals straight to the frontal lobe, the part responsible for focus, planning, and executive function

What functional lab testing looks like for kids (hint: no needles)

The "trash can" framework for understanding inflammatory load

Why Dana is not anti-medication and why she still advocates for this approach first

Dana's son went from daily meltdowns and four medications at age five to thriving at sixteen, off medication for years. More than 1,600 families have been through her method. This conversation will change how you think about what your child's body is trying to tell you.

Learn more about the podcast:

Follow the ADHD Mom (Jess):
 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quickwinsadhdmoms
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicalynnlewis/
X: https://x.com/jesslewisvoice
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@quickwinsADHDmoms
Website: https://theadhdmom.com/

Resources Mentioned:

Find Dana at adhdthriveinstitute.com and on Instagram at @ADHDThriveInstitute

For more articles and free resources for ADHD moms, visit theadhdmom.com

Support the show

Loved this episode? Here's your next step.

✅ Grab the Starter Bundle: Dopamine Hit List + More — click here for your free reset toolkit for the ADHD mom brain

Quick Wins for ADHD Moms is a podcast for smart, high-functioning moms with ADHD who are tired of systems that don't work. Practical resets for ADHD burnout, mental overload, and everyday mom life. Find every episode at theADHDmom.com.

What is your biggest challenge with ADHD?

When you are overwhelmed and everything feels abstract and urgent at the same time, what actually helps? The answer is a quick :30 reset. Yes, that’s it.

Emily Cox is a licensed clinical mental health counselor with over ten years of experience working with neurodivergent children, teens, and families. She is also neurodivergent herself, which means when she explains what is happening in your brain, she is usually speaking from the inside out.

In this episode:

The quick win: physically changing your environment when you are overwhelmed, even for thirty seconds, and why it works specifically for neurodivergent brains

Why direct eye contact can feel threatening to ADHD kids, and what to do instead when you need to have a real conversation with your child

What EMDR actually is, how bilateral stimulation works, and why it can be especially helpful for rewiring the "I'm broken" narrative that builds up over years

The window of tolerance: a concrete way to understand when your nervous system has been bumped out of its regulation zone and what brings it back

What happens to ADHD teens when the scaffolding disappears and they suddenly have to figure out adult life on their own

Emily works with kids as young as five and with young adults navigating the gap between structured school life and the wide open uncertainty of what comes next. Her approach is warm, practical, and refreshingly free of sitting across a couch staring at a stranger.

Learn more about the podcast:

Follow the ADHD Mom (Jess):
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quickwinsadhdmoms
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicalynnlewis/
X: https://x.com/jesslewisvoice
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@quickwinsADHDmoms
Website: https://theadhdmom.com/

Resources Mentioned:

Find Emily at larkspurtherapy.com

Support the show

Loved this episode? Here's your next step.

✅ Grab the Starter Bundle: Dopamine Hit List + More — click here for your free reset toolkit for the ADHD mom brain

Quick Wins for ADHD Moms is a podcast for smart, high-functioning moms with ADHD who are tired of systems that don't work. Practical resets for ADHD burnout, mental overload, and everyday mom life. Find every episode at theADHDmom.com.

What is your biggest challenge with ADHD?

Your child is smart. You know it. But the grades don't show it, and nothing you've tried is working. Dr. Linda Silbert, Ph.D., has spent more than 50 years working with kids who struggle in school, raising an ADHD son of her own, and running Strong Learning Centers in New York. She has seen this story from every angle. And she has some things to say about it.

In this conversation, Dr. Linda walks us through what she calls the "three shuns" every ADHD child battles: lack of motivation for non-preferred tasks, disorganization that touches everything including time, and procrastination that can look like laziness but isn't. She talks about why punishing these behaviors doesn't just fail; it actively makes things worse. And she makes the case that the school system itself, designed on an Industrial Revolution factory model, was never built for brains like your kid's.

We also get into the difference between ADHD, high anxiety, and auditory processing disorder (and why they're so easy to confuse), how to use metacognition to help your child build confidence, and what Dr. Linda's dream classroom would actually look like.

She also shares two books worth knowing: her newly updated "Why Good Kids Get Bad Grades" and Berticus, a hilarious novel written by her son, a TV producer with ADHD, for boys aged 9-11 who won't read anything. (My thirteen-year-old immediately wanted it.)

If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe, share it with your friends, and leave a review. It helps other adhd moms find us!

Learn more about the podcast:

Follow the ADHD Mom (Jess):
 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quickwinsadhdmoms
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicalynnlewis/
X: https://x.com/jesslewisvoice
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@quickwinsADHDmoms
Website: https://theadhdmom.com/

Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Linda Silbert Website: StrongLearning.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stronglearningcenter

Why Good Kids Get Bad Grades by Dr. Linda Silbert and Alvin Silbert, Ed.D.

Support the show

Loved this episode? Here's your next step.

✅ Grab the Starter Bundle: Dopamine Hit List + More — click here for your free reset toolkit for the ADHD mom brain

Quick Wins for ADHD Moms is a podcast for smart, high-functioning moms with ADHD who are tired of systems that don't work. Practical resets for ADHD burnout, mental overload, and everyday mom life. Find every episode at theADHDmom.com.

What is your biggest challenge with ADHD?

Most nutrition advice falls apart for ADHD moms because it never accounts for executive function. This episode tackles that gap directly. Amy Jones, a functional nutrition practitioner, ADHD life coach, and former teacher who was diagnosed with ADHD at 45, joins Jess to talk about why food chaos is not a discipline problem. It's a physiology problem.

Amy explains how skipping meals or eating inconsistently sets off a chain reaction: blood sugar drops, stress hormones rise, and suddenly you're more reactive, foggier, and closer to a meltdown. She walks through her own go-to move with her son (a cheese stick, seriously) and the simple systems she builds with clients so good nutrition doesn't require six hours of Sunday meal prep.

Support the show

Loved this episode? Here's your next step.

✅ Grab the Starter Bundle: Dopamine Hit List + More — click here for your free reset toolkit for the ADHD mom brain

Quick Wins for ADHD Moms is a podcast for smart, high-functioning moms with ADHD who are tired of systems that don't work. Practical resets for ADHD burnout, mental overload, and everyday mom life. Find every episode at theADHDmom.com.