If parenting your child feels like a constant battle—and every strategy you have been told to use only makes things worse—you are not alone. Many families live this struggle daily without realising there is a name for what they are seeing: Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA).

In this episode, we speak with Rachel Crutcher and Sarah Stewart from the PDA Society, two experts who have walked this path both personally and professionally. Together, we uncover why everyday demands trigger such intense anxiety, why rewards and consequences backfire, and how a calm-first, collaborative approach can finally bring relief.

You will hear the early signs many parents miss—demand avoidance even for things a child usually loves, the need for control, and the familiar pattern of fine at school, meltdown at home. Once you understand PDA through a can’t-not-won’t lens, everything begins to make sense.

Your guides walk you through the practical steps that transform family life:
 • How to lower demands without lowering expectations
 • How to spot the hidden “micro-demands” that drain your child before the day has even begun
 • How humour, choices, and written prompts make requests feel safe
 • Why treating a PDA child like a “mini adult” (explaining the why, asking permission, collaborating) reduces anxiety instantly

We also tackle one of the biggest pain points for PDA families: school. You will learn how masking works, which adjustments truly help, and what flexible, trauma-aware practice looks like in real life. If your school’s ethos is rigid, we help you recognise when it is not the right fit—and where to turn for support and SEND-law guidance.

For families with siblings, we share a simple principle that reduces resentment and restores harmony: use collaborative, low-demand strategies with everyone. It is fair. It is kind. And it works.

Finally, we show you where real, ongoing help exists—through the PDA Society’s free guidance service, moderated parent communities, self-paced learning hub, professional training, and bespoke school consultations.

If you are exhausted, overwhelmed, or unsure what to try next, this episode will give you both clarity and hope.
 You can understand your child. You can reconnect. And things can get better.

If this conversation supports you, follow the show, share it with your community, and leave a review—your story may be the encouragement another parent needs.

PDA Society 

PDA Society Link Tree

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So many parents of neurodivergent children lie awake at night wondering the same thing:
 “What will happen when my child enters the workplace?”

In this episode, Dr. Olivia sits down with Jenefer Livings, HR consultant, workplace needs assessor, and mother to a neurodivergent child, to demystify what neurodiversity at work really looks like. Together they explore how shifts in workplace culture, flexible working, and better understanding of executive functioning are transforming what is possible for neurodiverse adults.

You will learn:

• Why traditional school subjects do not predict your child’s future career success
• How to identify strengths—not just struggles—in your teenager
• What reasonable adjustments and Access to Work actually mean
• How parents can support teens to self-advocate with confidence
• Why the right workplace can unlock your child’s brilliance (and how to spot the wrong one)
• The rising opportunities in self-employment and entrepreneurship for differently wired minds

This is a hopeful, practical conversation for any parent wanting to help their child step into adulthood with confidence, clarity, and a sense of possibility.

Click here for Silk Helix

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📅 Tuesday 9 December at 12:00 pm (UK time)
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You are not imagining it.

 Pregnancy, birth, and early parenting are more overwhelming for many neurodivergent mums — and no one tells you why.

In this eye-opening episode, doula and neurodiversity advocate Alix Myers joins Dr Olivia to unpack the hidden challenges that make the perinatal journey feel so intense. If you ever wondered why you struggled more than other mums, this episode finally gives you the answers, validation, and tools you deserve.

✨ What You Will Learn

🧠 Sensory Overload in Pregnancy

Why hormonal shifts amplify sensory sensitivities — and how to make your body feel safer and calmer.

🏥 Creating a Neuro-Safe Birth Plan

How lighting, sound, communication style, and advocacy can completely change your birth experience.

🤐 The Hidden Danger of “Masking” in Labour

Why so many neurodivergent women go quiet under stress, and how this leads to medical teams missing signs of distress.

🍼 Feeding Without Overwhelm

Practical guidance for breastfeeding, chest feeding, or bottle feeding — without sacrificing your mental health.

🧩 Executive Function in Postpartum

Why everything feels 100 times harder, and how simple systems can reduce chaos and protect your wellbeing.

🤝 How Partners Can Truly Support You

From non-verbal cues to boundary-bouncing — what your partner really needs to know.

💛 Why This Episode Matters

If pregnancy or early motherhood felt harder than it “should,” this conversation offers compassion, clarity, and solutions. You will walk away feeling understood, supported, and far less alone.

Contact Alix Myers Virtual Doula 

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🎄 Early Christmas Gift: Join my free webinar on Keeping Calm During the Holidays
📅 Tuesday 9 December at 12:00 pm (UK time)
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Become part of the ADHD Warrior Mum’s Recharge Station — your space for group coaching, expert guidance, real connection, and the calm you deserve.

Many neurodivergent children struggle to make and keep friends — not because they do not care, but because they experience the world differently. In this episode, Dr Olivia speaks with Kirsten, founder of Uncommon, a unique online community that helps neurodiverse children build friendships and confidence through shared interests like gaming, art, and creativity.

Kirsten shares her personal journey to an autism diagnosis, why traditional social spaces often fail neurodivergent kids, and how Uncommon’s mentoring model is transforming lives. Together, they explore what true belonging means — and how finding your tribe can change everything.

Whether your child is shy, anxious, or struggling to connect, this episode will give you hope, practical insights, and a new perspective on social growth for neurodiverse children.

🌐 Learn more about Uncommon  

💬 Connect with Us

🎄 Early Christmas Gift: Join my free webinar on Keeping Calm During the Holidays
📅 Tuesday 9 December at 12:00 pm (UK time)
👉 Click here to receive the Zoom details.

🌱 Join our SEND Parenting Private WhatsApp Community — a safe space to share, learn, and feel supported by parents who truly understand.

⚡ Ready to go deeper?
Become part of the ADHD Warrior Mum’s Recharge Station — your space for group coaching, expert guidance, real connection, and the calm you deserve.

What if the problem isn't your child—it's the system?

If school mornings feel like a battlefield and your child is shrinking under constant pressure, this episode offers hope. Dr. Olivia sits down with Cassie Olguin—homeschooling mother of three (including neurodivergent twins) and Outschool education lead—to explore what learning looks like when you step outside the traditional classroom.

Cassie's Journey: From early motor delays and night terrors to navigating autism, ADHD, OCD, and anxiety, Cassie shares the messy, real path many families walk. You'll discover how labels became tools for changing the environment—not verdicts on her daughter's potential.

What You'll Learn: ✨ Charter homeschooling demystified – How oversight works without rigid timetables
✨ Personal pace over grade levels – Why your child doesn't need to "keep up"
✨ Practical strategies that worked – Delaying reading until readiness, reframing maths as everyday numeracy, using interest-led classes
✨ Outschool's magic – Live sessions with expert tutors (think: veterinary science with a practicing vet, maths through Minecraft, virtual history escape rooms)
✨ Redefining success – Why standardised tests don't measure intelligence, creativity, or resilience

The Twin Perspective: Perhaps most moving: Cassie's twins are taking completely different educational paths through adolescence. One thrives with college-level work; the other flourishes at a gentler pace. Different tracks, equal worth.

Key Takeaways for Parents:

• Start without decision paralysis—you don't need to figure it all out at once
• Find your support network and share resources
• Outsource subjects you don't love (yes, really!)
• Mastery-based learning vs. arbitrary grade levels
• Small online classes that respect sensory needs and attention spans

If your child is struggling, this conversation offers relief, clarity, and a roadmap forward.

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 ⭐ Leave a review to help more families find practical, compassionate support

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Coupon Code: SEND40

Terms: Offer expires 12/31/25 at 11:59 pm PDT. Registered Outschool account required. Enter code at checkout for $40 USD off a new membership. $40 off membership only valid for first-time memberships. Limited to the first 500 users. Cannot be combined with another offer. Subject to Outschool's Terms of Service

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🎄 Early Christmas Gift: Join my free webinar on Keeping Calm During the Holidays
📅 Tuesday 9 December at 12:00 pm (UK time)
👉 Click here to receive the Zoom details.

🌱 Join our SEND Parenting Private WhatsApp Community — a safe space to share, learn, and feel supported by parents who truly understand.

⚡ Ready to go deeper?
Become part of the ADHD Warrior Mum’s Recharge Station — your space for group coaching, expert guidance, real connection, and the calm you deserve.

Half-term chaos, slammed doors, sharp words—if that sounds familiar, you are not alone. In this episode, Dr Olivia Kessel sits down with teen expert Kim McCabe to unpack why your once-snuggly child suddenly bristles at “How was your day?” and how to respond without losing your cool or your connection. From the teenage brain’s rebuild to the unique load neurodiverse teens carry, we explore what is really happening under the surface—and the simple shifts that can change everything at home.

Kim explains why after-school meltdowns often land on parents, how masking drains emotional capacity, and what co-regulation looks like in real life. Together, we cover how to use short validating phrases instead of lectures, hold boundaries that reflect your core values, and create safe outlets for big feelings that do not harm anyone. You will hear why permissiveness can feel like indifference to teens, how to choose a few non-negotiables, and when to step back so your young person can save face and recover their balance.

We also share low-pressure ways to rebuild closeness: monthly parent–teen “dates,” visiting their world first—whether that is gaming, football, memes, or TikTok—without judgment, and narrating your own self-regulation to model coping. Whether you are parenting girls or boys, mums or dads, neurotypical or neurodiverse, the principles hold true: be the parent, team up with other adults, and protect your own capacity. Calm and loving is your superpower—but it needs fuel.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a parent who needs a boost, and leave a quick review so more families can find these tools. And if you are ready for deeper support, check the show notes for details on the Recharge and Connect SEND Summit—join us in person or via live stream.

💬 Resources Mentioned in This Episode

If today’s conversation with Kim McCabe resonated with you, you can find out more about her work at Rites for Girls
, where she supports parents and teens through the transitions of adolescence.
Explore her brilliant book, From Daughter to Woman: Parenting Girls Safely Through Their Teens
, and discover her Weekend Retreat for Mothers of Daughters
— a beautiful space to reconnect, reflect, and parent with greater awareness and ease.

💬 Connect with Us

🎄 Early Christmas Gift: Join my free webinar on Keeping Calm During the Holidays
📅 Tuesday 9 December at 12:00 pm (UK time)
👉 Click here to receive the Zoom details.

🌱 Join our SEND Parenting Private WhatsApp Community — a safe space to share, learn, and feel supported by parents who truly understand.

⚡ Ready to go deeper?
Become part of the ADHD Warrior Mum’s Recharge Station — your space for group coaching, expert guidance, real connection, and the calm you deserve.

Burnout has a way of making even the smallest task feel impossible. We open with a lifeline for parents raising neurodivergent children, then sit down with campaigner and founder Agnes Agyepong to trace how postnatal depression and isolation became the spark for two powerful vehicles of change: the Glow Mama Awards and a research-led movement tackling maternal and SEND inequalities.

Agnes shares the surprising role social media played in her recovery—authentic posts, wry humour, and micro-moments of solidarity that made her feel seen. That insight grows into Glow Mama, a people’s choice awards platform celebrating the creators who keep mothers going at 3 a.m. From there, Agnes dives into the Black maternal health crisis and the environmental factors that stack the odds against families long before labour begins, culminating in the Black Child Clean Air Report and cross-sector partnerships. The throughline is clear: these are public health problems that show up in clinics, classrooms, and on our streets.

We dig into SEND inequity with lived experience. Agnes talks about being treated with suspicion when her son was self-harming, becoming a school governor to be heard, and the way adultification bias and rigid behaviour policies fast-track exclusions before support arrives. We challenge the outdated, industrial model of schooling and argue for personalised education that works for every brain. Practical guidance runs throughout: why a Year 3 screening won’t secure legal protections, how an Educational Psychologist’s report unlocks exam access and durable support, and how to build an evidence trail that proves whether a school can meet need.

If you want clear next steps, we’ve got them: back petitions so policymakers see the data, write your MP so SEND rises in local triage, connect with specialist groups for Education Other Than At School pathways, and join community networks that share tactics without gatekeeping. Neurodivergent thinkers are not problems to be fixed; they are the innovators we need. Subscribe, share with a caregiver who needs hope, and leave a review to help more families find real tools and real change.

💬 Connect with Us

🎄 Early Christmas Gift: Join my free webinar on Keeping Calm During the Holidays
📅 Tuesday 9 December at 12:00 pm (UK time)
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🌱 Join our SEND Parenting Private WhatsApp Community — a safe space to share, learn, and feel supported by parents who truly understand.

⚡ Ready to go deeper?
Become part of the ADHD Warrior Mum’s Recharge Station — your space for group coaching, expert guidance, real connection, and the calm you deserve.

 What if the problem was never your child—but the system itself?
In this powerful conversation, Dr. Olivia sits down with Esther Jones, mindfulness teacher, mother of three, and author of The Parent’s Handbook to Unschooling Yourself, to explore what happens when we let go of the ‘shoulds’ that weigh parents down. From daily battles over school refusal to the pressure of academic milestones, Esther shares her family’s journey into unschooling—a path that focuses on curiosity, connection, and trust rather than control.

Together, they unpack how mindfulness and self-compassion can transform not just how our children learn, but how we parent. Whether you are curious about alternatives to traditional education or simply looking for a way to bring more calm and joy into your home, this episode will help you see that the first step to helping your child thrive might just be learning to “unschool” yourself.

Author & mindful parenting coach

Book: The Parent's Handbook to Unschooling Yourself

Podcast: The Unschool Space

Website: www.esther-jones.com

👉 Join ADHD Warrior Mum: The Recharge Station

 Join Dr. Olivia Kessel and leading SEND experts at the Recharge and Connect Summit on 11 November 2025 at Phyllis Court, Henley-on-Thames (also livestreamed).
A day to recharge, connect, and gain practical tools for raising neurodiverse children. 💛
👉 sendparenting.com/event

💬 Connect with Us

🎄 Early Christmas Gift: Join my free webinar on Keeping Calm During the Holidays
📅 Tuesday 9 December at 12:00 pm (UK time)
👉 Click here to receive the Zoom details.

🌱 Join our SEND Parenting Private WhatsApp Community — a safe space to share, learn, and feel supported by parents who truly understand.

⚡ Ready to go deeper?
Become part of the ADHD Warrior Mum’s Recharge Station — your space for group coaching, expert guidance, real connection, and the calm you deserve.

✨ Click here for SENsory Mother - Laura Ellis

✨ Click here for 30-day Guide to Better Sleep

 👉 Join ADHD Warrior Mum: The Recharge Station

What if the meltdown in your hallway isn’t defiance at all, but a terrified nervous system asking for help? We go straight to the heart of “challenging behaviour” with Laura, a teacher and mum of neurodivergent twins, who moved from daily crisis to a calmer, kinder home by changing how she understood panic, overload, and connection. Her story spans premature birth, early diagnoses, masking at school, and the moment everything fell apart—then slowly came back together.

We break down the physiology of fight or flight in plain English—what rising heart rate, redirected blood flow, and sensory overwhelm do to a child’s thinking brain—and why sticker charts and lectures backfire mid-meltdown. You’ll hear the hidden social demands most of us miss: the chirpy morning greeting, the barrage of car-ride questions, the insistence on eye contact. We swap over-talking for visuals and scripts, and share a deceptively simple morning playlist that turned dread into momentum. Curiosity replaces blame through a great example of literal thinking (yes, he handed over the red and blue food colouring—because that’s what was asked).

We also map the sensory layer—why kicking and slamming can signal a need for proprioception—and how a realistic sensory routine lowers baseline stress. A striking moment at a cricket match shows how the right environment can flip chaos to clarity in seconds. Boundaries still matter, but timing is everything: teach after calm, not during crisis, and make consequences predictable, visual, and discussed in advance. If you’ve felt hopeless, ashamed, or judged, this conversation will hand you language, tools, and the relief of being understood.

Want more support and live coaching with neurodiversity experts? Join the ADHD Warrior Mom Recharge Station for weekly group coaching, monthly masterclasses, self-care sessions, and a community that gets it. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs hope today, and leave a review to help more families find us.

💬 Connect with Us

🎄 Early Christmas Gift: Join my free webinar on Keeping Calm During the Holidays
📅 Tuesday 9 December at 12:00 pm (UK time)
👉 Click here to receive the Zoom details.

🌱 Join our SEND Parenting Private WhatsApp Community — a safe space to share, learn, and feel supported by parents who truly understand.

⚡ Ready to go deeper?
Become part of the ADHD Warrior Mum’s Recharge Station — your space for group coaching, expert guidance, real connection, and the calm you deserve.

Dr Olivia Kessel welcomes back co-authors Georgina Benger and Karen Price to discuss restorative justice as a compassionate, relationship-based approach that helps children understand the impact of their actions and repair harm.

• Georgina's research at Cambridge University revealed schools still use the same punishment methods from 1846 despite their ineffectiveness
• Traditional punishments fail to teach accountability and create patterns where children accept consequences without understanding impact
• Restorative justice shifts focus from punishment to repairing relationships through a seven-step process
• Creating a safe space, active listening, and acknowledging emotions are foundational steps in restorative practice
• The approach encourages children to explore the impact of their actions and take accountability without forced apologies
• Particularly beneficial for neurodivergent children who often experience disproportionate punishment in traditional systems
• Implementing restorative practices in schools requires time initially but becomes embedded in culture and ultimately saves time
• Children learn to resolve conflicts independently when these practices are consistently modeled
• The core principles include prioritizing relationships, focusing on learning rather than labeling, and recognizing that healing should involve everyone

If getting your child to sleep feels like a battle, download our free 30-day Better Sleep Starter Guide at sendparenting.com/sleep – designed with ADHD in mind but effective for all neurodiverse children.

📘  Click here for Willow's Day

 ✨ Click here for 30-day Guide to Better Sleep

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💬 Connect with Us

🎄 Early Christmas Gift: Join my free webinar on Keeping Calm During the Holidays
📅 Tuesday 9 December at 12:00 pm (UK time)
👉 Click here to receive the Zoom details.

🌱 Join our SEND Parenting Private WhatsApp Community — a safe space to share, learn, and feel supported by parents who truly understand.

⚡ Ready to go deeper?
Become part of the ADHD Warrior Mum’s Recharge Station — your space for group coaching, expert guidance, real connection, and the calm you deserve.