ADHD Mums

Have you ever stood at the sink at nine o'clock at night, kids asleep, house finally quiet, and had a friend text you how are you going? — and found nothing there? Not sad. Not fine. Just nothing. You could have told her exactly how the kids were, what's on tomorrow, what your hubby's up to, what's happening with the school term. But you, the actual person underneath running all of it — you went looking for her and she wasn't in.

There's a name for that. It's not the exhaustion everyone talks about. It's the other one.

W...

You did the envelope early. You had the cash inside. You booked the babysitter. You had three adults on deck for one soccer game. And by the time you got to the car park, you were at 3% battery, panting, holding someone else's dog, and your son had his shirt over his head pretending to be a turtle.

You'd done everything right. And it still looked like you hadn't done anything at all.

What We Cover

Have you ever made a deal with yourself at the end of a really bad week — that's it, I'm not doing it anymore, I'm only doing what he does — and then washed up three times by Tuesday without noticing? Have you ever bought him something mid-fight when you were supposed to be on strike? Have you ever lost it because your nine-year-old defended his dad by pointing out he did one load of washing, as if that was the bar?

I couldn't stop thinking about a listener who did all three in one week. I texted a frie...

Have you ever been on medication, done all the things, prepped, pre-scheduled, and still lost the plot completely — and then spent the drive home wondering if the medication is even working? Have you ever gone back to your GP and said 'I'm still losing it' and walked out with a higher dose, a different script, or a referral — and none of it touched the actual problem? Have you ever thought maybe I'm just broken in a way that medication can't reach?

You're not. But nobody told you there were two layers — and this episode is the one that e...

Have you ever told yourself you'll finally do the thing when it's quiet — and then the quiet came and you reorganised a drawer? Have you ever promised yourself the school holidays would be different, stacked up everything you were going to get done, and then spent the first Monday back staring at the wall and doing everyone's admin except your own? Have you ever been the most productive you've been all year on the last week of term, and then wondered why that woman never shows up any other time?

What we cover

It's 11:00 PM. You sit up in bed with your chest tight and your heart going. Nothing happened. You went to sleep fine. You lie there trying to work out what's wrong with you, and the answer is nothing — except your body has been running a two-hour delayed reaction to a school email you read, closed, and forgot about at 9:02 PM.

What We Cover

📬 Listener Questions & Community

It's 5:45 PM. I'm cooking three separate dinners on not enough burners. My six-year-old is crying about the green spoon. My eight-year-old is in a Minecraft cave with a dog that needs a bone. My ten-year-old has found paint.

'Find a good stopping place' is good advice.

It just assumes conditions that don't exist in this house.

What We Cover

A psychologist told me to do a body scan. I was lying on hard yellow grass in 38-degree heat with three kids screaming inside and ants on my arms, trying to feel my body. I felt nothing. Or I felt everything and couldn't name any of it.

She concluded the problem was me.

It wasn't.

What We Cover

The principal told you to contact region. Region told you to contact the principal. You're sitting in your car wondering if you're going quietly insane. You're not — and neither is the principal. The system is built to do exactly this, to everyone inside it. Sara Hocking is back to map a way out, and the news isn't what you think.

What We Cover

A friend came over the other day. She'd just done a week on the Sunshine Coast with her three kids, the whole pack-up by herself. We were sitting at my kitchen table doing that thing where you're laughing and crying at the same time. She couldn't get her kids to put the bins out because they were glued to their iPads. I said yep, same. The deeper problem isn't just the iPad. It's that someone pulled every single support structure out from under us, handed us a screen, and then put the guilt on top.

What We...

I picked up the kids in my husband's car the other day. The youngest said something. The next one waited until they finished, then said something back. There was a pause. I turned around and looked at three kids not even fighting and thought, is this how pickup goes? In my car, it's on the second they get in. Someone's interrupting, someone's yelling, I'm turning the music up to drown them out, ready to throw myself onto the driveway while it's moving. Same kids. Same school. Different mum.

What We Cover

You're at the dinner table you fought to make happen. Your phone lights up — school app, swimming's been moved, the bag has to be packed tonight. You know in your bones that if you don't write it down right now, it's gone by morning. You pick up your phone. Your kid says, you said no phones at dinner, I'm getting my iPad then. The parenting advice has told you you've just damaged everyone. The research says you've just used the exact tool your brain needs.

What We Cover

Listener Question Episode: Bec drops the kids at school, the kitchen's a mess, and she can't let herself eat breakfast until it's clean. Loads the washing on too — wouldn't want to waste time. She finally sits down at 11am. She's wondering if it's an ADHD thing or if she's just weird. She's not weird. She's been trying the wrong strategy on the wrong problem for years.

What We Cover

The cafe moment. A waiter. Six seconds of blank silence. I've ordered for everyone in my life for 40 years and when someone asked what I wanted, there was nobody home. Season 4 starts here. This isn't a self-help season. It's not a divorce season. It's the work nobody warned us about — what happens after the diagnosis, when the operating system fails and you don't know who you are without it.

What We Cover

The birthday of ADHD Mums came and went and I didn't celebrate. I'd spent a whole season demanding a seat at the table. By the end of it I was in bed, couldn't walk, getting diagnosed with perimenopause mid-record, and a friend asked me one question that broke the whole thing open. Supportive of what?

What We Cover

Sorry I'm late. I have ADHD. So does my friend. She's sitting at the coffee shop halfway through her first one, watching me sweat through the door twenty minutes late. Same diagnosis. Different morning. Different brain doing the work behind it.

What We Cover

You take your child to the doctor. You tell them this isn't fussy, this isn't a phase. They tell you he'll grow out of it. Maybe it's his tonsils. Maybe you're anxious. Maybe your boundaries aren't strong enough. You leave the appointment knowing something isn't right, and starting to wonder if the something is you.

What We Cover

You can talk your daughter down in two minutes. Then you turn around and tell yourself to stop being such a f*cking embarrassment.

Same brain. Same mum. Two completely different voices within minutes.

🧠 What we cover in this episode:

Sometimes the only thing that got you through the day was the iPad.

And then you scrolled past a clip telling you screens are rewiring your kid's brain. Causing ADHD. Making them socially broken. And your stomach dropped.

You weren't being lazy. You were trying to regulate yourself before you said something you'd regret.

But the guilt arrived anyway. Right on cue.

This week, Amanda Moses — senior psychologist, ADHD and autism assessor, the woman who actually trains other psychologists in this space — sits down to go through the Osher Günsberg clip...

There's a script around Mother's Day that doesn't account for any of us.

You're meant to want a candle, a coffee, a sleep-in, and to look visibly grateful at the end of it. If you can't name what you want, you're ungrateful. If you do name it, you have to manage it. If you stay quiet, you spend Sunday night cleaning up the wrapping paper from your own gifts.

This episode is the one underneath that script. The maths nobody's saying out loud. The reason your brain blanks. And one small thing to try this...

Half the conversations about AI are men in San Francisco telling you it'll change everything. The other half are people telling you it'll destroy the planet and your children's future.

Neither of those people are doing the school run, the NDIS application, the lunchboxes, or holding it together at 9pm.

This episode is for the mum in the middle. The one who's curious but hesitant. The one who's already using it but feels weird about it. The one who tried it once, got a creepy answer, and shut the tab.

Leticia Andrack has...

This podcast episode is not a replacement for individual medical advice and is general education only.

You go to the mother's group, you don't put the brake on the pram, and it rolls across the carpark.

Baby is fine. You are not.

You're already the mum who decided — quietly, without asking anyone — that you wouldn't take your ADHD meds while breastfeeding. Because that's what good mothers do.

This is the episode about what happens when 'just push through' stops being a plan.

What we cover

You've spent more time on drop-offs, pickups and meetings this week than your kid has spent actually learning.

You keep telling yourself the routine is good for them. They come home flat anyway.

You can see it isn't working. You just can't picture what else looks like.

So you stay on the fence. Another term. Another meeting. Another 11pm google.

What we cover

If your child looks ‘fine’ at school… but falls apart the second they get home —

this episode is for you.

🧠 What We Cover in This Episode:

If you’ve ever sat in a school meeting

hearing what’s ‘expected’…

and thought

‘this feels like too much… too early’ —

this episode is for you.

Because sometimes it’s not subtle.

It’s that quiet moment where something doesn’t sit right…

but you’re told it’s normal.

In this episode, we unpack what’s really happening when school expectations keep creeping up — academically, behaviourally, socially — and why so many kids are being asked to meet standards that don’t actually match where they are.

💭...

If you’ve ever said

‘can we just talk about something?’

and it escalates

before you’ve even said the thing —

this episode is for you.

Because it’s not the conversation

that’s blowing up.

It’s what happens

in the seconds before it even starts.

In this episode, we unpack that exact moment — the one where you’re trying to keep it calm, keep it small, keep it ‘not a big deal’…

and somehow it still turns into tension, shutdown, or...

If you’ve ever stepped away for five minutes…

come back…

and everything has already escalated —

this episode is for you.

Because it’s not just the moment.

It’s the feeling that if you’re not there…

it doesn’t hold.

And somehow

you’ve become the thing

that keeps everything from tipping over.

In this episode, we unpack the invisible role so many ADHD mums carry — the one where you’re not just part of the family… you’re the one holding it...

In this episode, we unpack the invisible load of trying to do something simple inside a day that won’t hold it. The interruptions, the split attention, the constant restarting — and how quickly that gets turned into ‘I’m the problem.’

From the outside, it looks like nothing happened.

But inside it?

You were doing that one task

over and over again.

🧠 What We Cover in This Episode:

In this episode, we unpack the very real (and very common) experience of showing up already stretched… masking it with humour… and then internalising the entire thing as a personality flaw.

The jokes land.

People laugh.

It looks like you’re coping.

But underneath it — something else is happening.

🧠 What We Cover in This Episode:

If you’ve ever left a group chat

replaying everything you said…

and everything you didn’t…

and somehow landed on

‘that felt off… was that me?’

this episode is for you.

Because this isn’t just about group chats.

Or school committees.

Or awkward conversations that go nowhere.

It’s about what happens when everyone in the room

is solving a different problem…

and no one realises it.

In this episode, we unpack the kind of interaction...

If you’ve removed the pressure…

stepped back…

even taken a break…

and you still feel on edge — this episode is for you.

Because this is the part no one explains.

When nothing is ‘wrong’ anymore…

but your body is still acting like it is.

In this episode, we unpack what happens when stress isn’t the thing driving your anxiety — and why removing the load doesn’t always create relief. If you’ve ever wondered ‘is this just who I am?’ this conversation will shift how you see it.

...

There’s a moment when you realise it’s not just a ‘bad term’ at school.

It’s mornings that feel impossible.

A child who won’t go.

Or can’t go.

And suddenly the question changes from

'how do we fix this?'

to

'where do we go now?'

WHAT WE COVER

– What actually happens when mainstream school stops working

– Why some children aren’t ‘failing school’ — the system is failing them

– The reality of alternative education (and t...

There is a moment at a family barbecue where your child isn’t sitting at the table.

They’re walking.

Talking.

Eating on the move.

And someone says it.

'We didn’t have this ADHD thing when we had kids.'

And just like that, it stops being about lunch

and starts feeling like it’s about you.

Because what sounds casual

lands like doubt.

WHAT WE COVER

– Why 'we didn’t have ADHD back then' still shows up in...

Somewhere in almost every ADHD conversation, someone eventually says it.

'There weren't kids like this when I was at school.'

Or the slightly more polite version:

'Why are there suddenly so many ADHD kids now?'

And if you're a parent of a neurodivergent child, you've probably heard this one too:

'Maybe it's just screens.'

This episode pulls that myth apart.

Because the truth is far more complex — and far more interesting.

ADHD didn't suddenly appear in the last 20 years.

...

School systems are built to notice disruption.

The child throwing chairs.

The child refusing to sit down.

The child who can't stay quiet.

But there is another group of kids.

The ones who sit still.

The ones who follow instructions.

The ones teachers describe as 'lovely', 'polite', or 'no trouble at all'.

And those are often the kids quietly falling apart.

Because when a child internalises stress instead of showing it outwardly, the education system often doesn't see the struggle at...

You're told your child is doing great at school.

'Wish I had more like her'

'No issues here.'

But every afternoon at 3pm something else happens.

The car door shuts.

And the child who 'had a great day' collapses.

The meltdown doesn't start at school.

It starts when the mask comes off.

For many Mums, this creates a strange kind of confusion.

School says everything is fine.

But home tells a completely different story.

In this...

You’ve sent the emails.

You’ve attended the meetings.

You’ve tried to be calm, collaborative, reasonable.

And nothing changes.

Then suddenly something serious happens — a suspension, an incident, a formal complaint — and overnight the school moves quickly.

So what just happened?

This episode unpacks the moment many ADHD mums eventually hit: the point where being reasonable stops working — and why that happens inside the school system.

Because for many families, the problem isn’t communication.

It’s understanding what schools actually respond to, what...

There is a particular kind of confusion that happens when your child likes their teacher.

If you’ve ever thought, ‘But she’s so lovely… why isn’t this working?’ I explore this massive question wth Bronnie Hammond-Vale.

This episode is for you.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Sometimes the problem is the gap between teacher intention and system capacity.

A teacher can care deeply.

A teacher can try hard.

A teacher can be doing their best in a room full of kids who all need something different.<...

You’re sitting in a meeting thinking you’re here to talk about support.

There’s a plan. There are ‘adjustments’.

And yet your child is still escalating… and suddenly the school is hinting at removal, reduced hours, or ‘this isn’t the right setting’.

This episode is the practical middle bit no one gives you:

When a plan exists, but it’s either the wrong plan — or it’s not actually being applied.

WHY THIS MATTERS

When a school says ‘the plan isn’t working’, it often gets translated as ‘your...

There is a moment in some school meetings where the language changes.

You walk in expecting support. Adjustments. Solutions.

But then different words start appearing.

‘Safety.’

‘Impact on others.’

‘Capacity.’

‘We’ve tried everything.’

And you can feel the shift before you fully understand it.

You start thinking:

How did this go from help… to risk?

WHY THIS MATTERS

ADHD mums are already carrying invisible labour, school advocacy, therapy coordination, and the emotional regulation of the entire household.

So...