Messy, Beautiful, ADHD Parenting: A Lesson in Grace

In this heartfelt episode, Kylee dives into the messy, beautiful world of kindness—especially when life gets tough. She opens up about the challenges of parenting with ADHD, shedding light on the mental load that comes with it and how it intersects with life’s everyday struggles.

Through raw and honest storytelling, Kylee reflects on a moment with a client that deepened her understanding of grace and empathy. She reminds us that while everyone faces hardships, the weight of those challenges can look very different depending on personal circumstances and privilege.

This conversation is an invitation to lean into compassion—not just for others, but for ourselves too. From the highs and lows of parenting to the power of community support, Kylee encourages listeners to step up, offer help where they can, and most importantly, extend grace to those who might need it most. A reminder that sometimes, the greatest gift we can give is understanding.

Enjoy!!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey guys, you get a little bit of an extra mini episode dropping this weekend. I just had a little bit of a Friday pondering and I'm really interested to get other people's opinions and insights into it. And I just want to have a happy, happy weekend and try to give somebody a break. Hello friends, welcome to the Neuralicious podcast. This is a space where we can talk openly about parenting neurodiverse kids. I'm Emily, founder and director of Mammal Road, an NDIS registered autism specific service. I'm also the mum of three kids and my eldest has a ton of neuro spice. And I'm Kylie, I'm a paediatric occupational therapist who has a special interest in ADHD, autism and building connection with kids who don't really seem to like anyone. We are the Brains Trust I have a situation to dissect with you today. Yesterday I was talking to a prospective client and they mentioned to me how Their life's really stressful at the moment and work's really stressful. And they were speaking to their manager and she was in a moment of vulnerability, said, I'm just having a really hard time at the moment. Like life's just really hard for me. And her manager replied with, everyone's life is hard. It made me sit and ponder quite a few times since then about how The concept that everyone's life is hard, I agree that everyone's life is hard, but there is a certain privilege in being able to choose your hard and choose being able to ask for support from people and having the village around you, which I know we speak a lot about the village. And I just really thought that that is a really poor management skill in devaluing somebody's heart. Because this morning, I had a steadily difficult morning like every morning getting the kids ready for school and trying to keep everybody motivated and everyone's a bit tired so they're all asking me for something small but that's three small things that then makes a medium thing and then last night I asked the boys to take the rubbish out and put it on the curb and They didn't hear the last bit of the sentence and just took the rubbish out. So when I woke up this morning and walked outside, the garbage bin hasn't been empty and now the garbage bin is overflowing and it's just another task that now I need to work out how to get rid of the rubbish. because I don't want it sitting there for another week. And I was like, heart is varied because there are people out there that have neurodivergence themselves and then they're raising kids that are neurodiverse or have an intellectual disability. And that impacts all parts of your life because the job that I am doing now, I absolutely love. Like I could just– if I did this job before kids– I wouldn't have the insight of having kids, but I would have so much time to dedicate to these families. And then I have to click off, leave that, come home, and then there's another role and task to be done at home. I'm not currently in the position where I have a cleaner or a lawnmower or anything to sort of assist with those common duties that have to happen every day or every week. Yes, I do have kids, but the mental load of asking them and then the emotional load of having to put up with them whinging about having to do the task is another thing in itself that you really have to be mentally prepared strong for. One of the things that I really notice in my life is when I start to become chaotic in my brain, my house and car become really chaotic too. And because my kids have been raised by me, they follow suit and their rooms and lives are chaotic. There's common things that kids do where they just take like walk their clothes off in the morning and things are just left on the floor and then it just becomes sort of invisible to them that it's even there and that's another thing that you have to do of asking them to pick it up. I understand that that's how you learn but All those little tiny things are demands on my cognitive load. And at the end of the week, I'm just really cooked. So I'm now committed to going to the gym today at 9.30, just trying to really get my head clear. But I have all of this stuff sitting in the back of my head that needs to be done, and there's no time to do it. Like, I'm... Getting older, I can't function on little to no sleep. I'm not a good, happy human. And this week I really tried to get ahead of the game and stayed up and tried to clean so that the house is looking good. And I turn around and then the next day it's just like a bomb's hit it again. And that's me running on six hours sleep. And I'm like, my life in comparison to a lot of people's is not hard. My kids are fairly compliant. They're pretty good at running their own show for their ages. I don't have any significant barriers in their engagement in their environment or things like that. Like there are people out there that are truly having a much, much harder time than me with less resources. And I think that, I'm going to butcher the quote, but privilege is blind to those who have it, is a really important thing to sort of acknowledge as a society that your heart and the person next to you's heart are not the same. And it's not fair to impact somebody's life financially, emotionally, whatever, by saying a remark so flippant as to push the responsibility off you and back onto them, when everybody's trying their best, I was just really taken back that that's how people are living their life. That if you think you've got it hard, look at this. Instead of sitting there and holding space for someone in their heart. So I guess my message is, if you can help somebody in the tiniest little way, just do it. Like just help them a little bit. Just take that little load off and don't do it as a transaction. Just do it because. Like, let's just live in this pay it forward situation because you don't know how much that's going to help somebody. Just somebody stopping for a minute and seeing them in their heart. And just let them have a little bit of a bit. Just having a bad day. Let's just give everybody a little bit of grace, I reckon. Have a great day. Thanks for joining us on the Neuralicious podcast. If you've enjoyed this conversation and want to find out more, head to the Mumble Road Facebook page where we share moments from the podcast and so much more. Like stories you can relate to. And we'll ask you, the Neuralicious community, how things are going at your place. We'll also answer your questions whenever we can. Until next time, be kind to yourself.