Surviving and Thriving as a Parent with ADHD, with Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Debbie:

Hey Elaine, welcome to the podcast.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Debbie, thanks. Thanks for having me.

Debbie:

Yeah, I can’t actually believe that you haven’t been on the show before because we’ve been in conversation several times for your awesome summits that you do. And yeah, I’m really looking forward to this is also a new topic for the show, which at this point, it’s kind of hard to find new topics. So again, I can’t believe we haven’t had this conversation. So we’re going to be talking about today being a parent with ADHD, raising a neurodivergent kid raising an ADHD kid. And as a way to get into that, I’d love if you could kind of tell us a little bit about your story of discovering your own ADHD, which I know happened when you were an adult. And I just kind of want to get a sense of where you’re coming at this conversation from.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Sure. Thank you. I said to you earlier, thank you for having the conversation because it’s so important and I have so many conversations with adults with ADHD or their own neurodivergence. Sometimes they were diagnosed on their own as kids and now they’re adults and they realize they never dealt with it. Sometimes like me, they are adults who watch their kids getting diagnosed. I often say I watch them one by one like dominoes getting diagnosed with a whole range of things, like ADHD, anxiety, dyslexia, learning disabilities, you know, the whole thing. And at some point I looked at my husband and I must’ve been, I don’t know, 40, 42, I was in my early 40s, and I kind of thought there is no way that he can be responsible for all of the neurology in this house. And so I was trying to go back to graduate school, actually it was before I became a coach, I was trying to get a PhD to help other parents. And I realized if I was going to go back to school, I was going to need some help because I knew I was struggling. And so I went and had myself evaluated and I did a full psycho-ed evaluation on myself just like you would do with kids, which is pretty rare for adults, which is how I know I have both attention issues and learning disabilities. And they were both diagnosed in my 40s.

Debbie:

Wow. Wow, and I just have to, like, you know, we’re not gonna talk, spend too much time on this, but I just have to kind of ask about your childhood. You know, like, how, was it a surprise for you, or did it kind of connect a lot of dots for you?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Oh no, it was like when I was finally diagnosed, the way I describe it is I spent a couple of weeks crying and then all of a sudden it was like, oh my God, my whole life made sense. And I understood why I did so many things and where I struggled, like the social issues I struggled with as a kid or some of the substance abuse early and early sexuality that I experimented with. And then in college, I accommodated for myself by taking an entire major that I didn’t really like because I never had to take tests, I could write papers. And I didn’t have working memory and I didn’t understand what that meant. So there were a lot of ways in which when I finally figured it out, when I was a kid, girls didn’t have ADD. I mean, nobody really had ADD. When my brother was diagnosed, it was still called minimal brain dysfunction. So that tells you I was still in the 60s. And I was a smart kid who wanted to please. So I worked really hard and I worked harder than probably most of my peers. And I had enough anxiety to kind of get myself going. And then I remember in eighth grade going to my mom and saying, I think I’m crazy. I think I’m going crazy. And she took me seriously and she took me to a therapist and I sat across this big brown desk from some, you know, no offense, middle-aged white guy who talked to me for a little bit and then looked at my mom and said, “‘She’s fine’ and sent me out the door.” And that was kind of it. And so I just kind of learned to accommodate for myself and manage and I learned to work really, really hard, too hard in hindsight, but that was, I was raised in an achievement focused family where you’re smart, therefore you should achieve. And so, you know, maybe some eat few eating disorders and some substance abuse later, I managed to do it. But it definitely came at a cost.

Debbie:

Yeah, wow. Yeah, and I, you know, then fast forwarding to as a parent. So I love that you had that moment with your husband like this can’t all be you can’t be. But what was it looking like in your dynamic as a parent with your kids? Like how were you either not thriving in that relationship or where were you struggling? That you now know is probably a result of the way that you’re wired

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Yeah, well, so a couple of things come to mind. First of all, I think part of what happened was by the time I got out of college and into my 20s, I had figured out how to manage myself, right? And I was doing a pretty good job of it. And then I got married and I married somebody with neurodivergence who was a little, struggling a little bit more than I was to manage himself. And so I started with that. We did a lot of work in the early years of trying to get him some support. And that’s why that conversation with him, because it wasn’t all him, but at the first number of years, we thought it was all him, right? It was all his, which it wasn’t. And then as I started to have kids, my ability to manage myself or myself and my spouse, my household, as the demands increased, my capacity to stay on top of it decreased. And at some point I just kind of crossed threshold, hit the wall. I just couldn’t manage it anymore. And, you know, I can joke now with my youngest, who’s now 22, so I can joke and say, you know, my youngest put me over the edge. But on some level, it was true. Like I just, I had a lot of balls in the air and I was doing a pretty good job of keeping them all up in the air. And then I hit a point where everything just started falling. And…

To the outside world, it looked like we had it all together and we were doing great and my husband had a business and I was an active volunteer in my community and a stay at home mom and part-time work. But on the inside, I felt like a house of cards and I felt like it was falling apart. And I just never felt on top of anything. And when I think back on it, like when I was in my 20s and I was in a professional track and I was in a really challenging job, I was a national organizer for a region, a 13th state region. I remember then feeling like everybody keeps telling me I can do this, but why can’t I figure this out? Why can’t I get this? It was like that as a parent. It’s like everybody, the outside was giving me all this positive feedback and on the inside I’m like, don’t you realize it’s all falling apart? Like, and it didn’t look like it to the outside world but it felt like it on the inside. And there was more screaming and yelling, not as much from me, but as my, like, I just, I was more avoidant and crying and we just, it wasn’t fun, you know? It just, it wasn’t fun. And I had these really interesting, bright, quirky kids who, but we were just, none of us were hitting our best, you know?

Debbie:

Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, you weren’t thriving as a family as an individual. And so getting Yeah, yeah, no, I hear that I feel it. Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

And I was trying really hard. I was trying really hard. And so, at some point early on, I remember going to one of my kid’s psychiatrists and saying, could it be me too? And she said, no honey, you’re just a mom. To this day, that one gets me, right? No honey, you’re just a mom. And then she agreed to start me on a supplement. It wasn’t medication, it was called Deplin. In those days, it was a medical food to try to help reduce my stress. Because I have three very complex kids, my eldest was particularly complex. And then that led to eventually going to a doctor for myself and said for years I was treated for anxiety. Which it rounded the corners, but it didn’t really help me navigate. And I think that’s very common for adult women with ADHD in particular, is that ADHD is often misdiagnosed as anxiety in adult women. Yeah.

Debbie:

Right, right. Yeah, and I actually, I’m gonna make a note because I wanna come back to that a little later, but I just wanna even circle back to that comment of, no, you’re just a mom. So the idea of being like, this is what motherhood’s like. So then on top of the fact that you’re already feeling like you’re not doing a great job at this and something has to give, you’re being told, suck it up.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Yeah, you’re crazy, you’re wrong. It was kind of like what happened in eighth grade. I said, I think I’m going crazy. And he said, no, you’re fine. And I literally used that language with my mother at 13 years old. Like, you know, something’s not right here. And it was the same thing with my child psychiatrist. And she was a great psychiatrist. I really loved her. But the notion that

Debbie:

Yeah, wow. So invalidating.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Like to her mind, I had three very complex kids and a complex husband. That was enough. Because I was what we would nowadays call, although I hate the term high functioning. I as, as challenged as I was, I was still the executive function for the family. I was still at frontal lobe for the family. And because I could make it to appointments on time, there was a, there was this assumption that I couldn’t be in.

Debbie:

Right, right. So just to kind of think about, or just to kind of, sorry, my brain, just my, okay. Before we kind of pivot and talk more about what you hear from parents who are also, you know, navigating their own ADHD journey, I’m just curious then, was it your getting that identification you said, you know, was in your early 40s and figuring that out? Was that really the start of you kind of making this pivot and, and kind of finding more peace in your family? Like, how did that? Yeah, can you tell us about that?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Well, there were a lot of things. The diagnosis, as I said, I was on my way back to graduate school and I couldn’t find, and so the diagnosis allowed me to get, because I had to go back and do the GREs and that whole thing. And so it kind of gave me that impetus to say, okay, I got to figure out how to make this work for me. And fortunately for me, I discovered, I couldn’t find a graduate program that met my schedule with three small children. And so I took a coaching class as a stopgap measure and I fell in love. And I realized that this was what I had been looking for. This is what I had been doing. It was an empowerment based approach to managing these kids. And then as I started getting coaching and doing coaching, I discovered that it had this profoundly dramatic effect on myself as a parent, as an adult, it helped me learn to start managing myself and set appropriate and realistic expectations for myself, as well as improving the way I was communicating my kids. But, you know, it’s funny, I haven’t thought about this in a while, but when I was in coach training, I remember we did a module, a session on planning, and they were trying to teach us some planning tool or other, I can’t remember what it was, but I remember breaking down and losing it because I thought, well, if I have to help people plan, then I can’t do this because it’s too hard for me. Which obviously is not true. I’ve done it pretty well for a lot of years. But I’m also not the systems and structures guru, right? You and I have talked a lot over the years and a lot of people in our realm, help parents come up with systems and structures. And I’m much more focused on context and mindset and framework because I’m a big picture, that’s my skill set. And I think it sets the stage. And it was the framework and the context that helped me get my head around it so that I could figure out and get some support to figure out the systems and structures that worked for me or for my kids and they were always going to be different because it was never going to work for all three kids. I had to come up with different things for different kids. But I in order to do that, I had to give myself permission to be in the process of it with them as opposed to feeling like I had to know the answers.

Debbie:

Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Thank you for sharing that. I want to talk about some of the challenges that I hear from, hear about from parents and that I’m sure you hear about and we’ll do that right after a quick break. Okay. So you mentioned some of the challenges that you were experiencing. You talked about feeling like everything, this was this house of cards that was about to fall, you were kind of really struggling with stress and anxiety as a result of these complex kids you were raising. I’m wondering, you know, what else you hear from parents in terms of especially parents with ADHD that is so difficult for them as they’re navigating this. I mean, executive function comes to mind for me, because that’s something I hear a lot of like, Oh, my God, like, I struggle with executive function, yet it’s on me to help my kid develop their executive function skills. Like, how do I do this? So what do you hear from parents and what do you work with parents on?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

So there’s so many ways I could, so many directions to go. I’m thinking of three conversations I’ve had just today with different moms with ADHD. So one whose mom of teenagers and older kids, it was about managing her own anxiety and her own impulsive need to or desire to micromanage. So for her, it’s about. It’s managing the part of the ADD that makes it hard for her not to come in and take over because she’s so worried for them. For another mom I was talking to today, she’s a mom of boys and she’s like quietly, secretly asking for help but doesn’t really want her husband to know. Even though she was diagnosed young and she takes medication but she’s never done anything to treat her own ADHD and what became clear is she almost doesn’t feel entitled to treat her own ADHD. You know, we have this conversation about you wouldn’t not get treatment for your kids or for your husband, but somehow she didn’t feel legitimate. And I think that happens a lot with adults with ADHD, especially with women, is this sense that, well, I shouldn’t need this. I shouldn’t have to have help. I should be able to fill in the blank. And, you know, we have a group coaching program that we’ve been running for about a dozen years. And I was meeting with one of the groups of parents of teens a couple of weeks ago. And we were having a conversation about being the adult in the room. And it doesn’t stink that sometimes we have to be the grownup and sometimes we don’t wanna be. And what I heard myself saying, and this has been an insight for me in the last couple of weeks, is, It’s hard to have a brain-based health condition. It’s really hard to feel like there’s something going on in my brain and I don’t care how smart I am or whatever, there’s something going on that requires help or support and that feels crappy sometimes. And so we second guess ourselves and we ask ourselves, do I really need that medication? Do I really need that support? And we don’t want to need it because we’re human. And humans just, we’re terrible at asking for and accepting help. We’re just terrible at it. And we don’t want it. And somehow we don’t feel justified in it, I think. And I mean, I am almost 60 years old. I’ve been taking medication for, I don’t know, 15 years or whatever. I take a very small dose, but it really makes a difference. And for probably the first 10 to 12 years, every day I would ask myself, Should I take this or is this a crutch? Well, people use crutches when they have a broken leg and they need a crutch, you know? Like, it definitely makes a difference. And I’ve been thinking about a lot with this medication shortage because I’m like pinching pennies to make sure I’m gonna have my meds when I need them because I’m afraid that I’m gonna run out. Now I get that this is important for me is my allergy meds and my allergy meds are really important. But for at least a dozen years, I questioned myself. And I think that’s really common for a lot of us, that somehow we don’t feel valid or legitimate or that’s, yeah, it stinks to have a brain-based condition. Really does.

Debbie:

Yeah. And I’m wondering, you know, it’s so interesting and I, it makes so much sense in the sense of, you know, I shouldn’t need this, not feeling justified. And just that seed of doubt always like, is this a shortcoming about me? And I’m just wondering in your experiences, is that something you see more widely among women than men?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

I do think I see, well, I see more women than men. So it’s hard for me to say. I work with a lot of couples. I’ve worked with some men individually, but more women than men. So I see it more in women. You know, I’ll say when I look at my kids, my husband, my circle, I think a lot of us with issues with ADHD and mental health issues really resist having to have treatment for it. It doesn’t, we don’t want to. And there is so much stigma out there. And even if we’re, like I’m a staunch advocate, you know, you don’t get much louder and more vocal than I am about these issues. And quietly, there’s still a part of me that’s like, yeah, well, you know, maybe I shouldn’t need it. Like I have to have that conversation with myself all the time.

Debbie:

Wow. I mean, I think that would be really inspiring almost for the families that you’re working with because you’re very open and authentic about your own challenges with this. So that’s very relatable. So I’m sure that serves your work, but it’s hard.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Yeah, a lot of parents, they, yeah, they’re like, can I work with you? I just want someone who understands what it is to have ADHD, because if you put 10 people in a room with ADHD, it’s gonna look like 10 different people. It’s very different. It’s not as uniform as a lot of other conditions. And so it’s part of what makes it difficult to diagnose. And part of what can make it really complicated to treat and manage is that it’s so…it’s got so many tendrils to it. And so when you feel like you found somebody who gets you, that’s precious, you know?

Debbie:

Yeah. And I imagine so many adults if they’ve been identified as adults, they’ve also again, I don’t like using the word high functioning either but there are probably so many strategies and hacks that you’ve developed over the years that it that kind of I can see that internal battle always going on.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Yeah, well, and there’s something interesting that I’m noticing now as there, you know, younger people having kids and coming into the community who are, you know, when I first started, that people were more my age and I’ve been doing this a while, right? And it’s really interesting is the women who were diagnosed as kids or teens or, you know, young adults who were treated, they seem to have way more clarity and confidence in this is just who I am and how do I. Those of us who came to it late, I think there’s so much baggage. One of the things I teach parents or adults who are diagnosed for the first time themselves is to put the stick down. Because I think part of what happens is those of us who didn’t know for years, one of the ways we motivated ourselves was by beating ourselves up. Like veritably hitting ourselves over the head with a stick to get ourselves to do things. And we were successful, but it was not the most positive reward environment to do it. And what I do see is that there’s a younger generation of parents coming up now who are feeling less shame and less stigma around having the diagnosis, they’ve lived with it longer. They may not have ever understood it or learned to manage it. Like one of the women I was talking to today, she’s been diagnosed for 27 years, but she doesn’t even know what it is. Never, they just gave her medication and that was it. And that’s pretty typical. So there’s still a steep learning curve in terms of understanding the condition and understanding how to manage it. But I do see that there’s some reduction in shame and that’s coming and I’m hopeful for that, really hopeful.

Debbie:

Yeah. Yeah, I this generation is pretty phenomenal to see the way they are disclosing and sharing especially about mental health challenges and neurodivergence, all kinds of things. And I, it does feel like a huge sea change that ultimately is going to be really positive. In terms of, yeah, just openness and reducing any shame associated with the way that one is moving through the world. So I’m excited about that too. I wanna, okay. Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Yeah. And I think social media has helped with that a little bit, too. For all of the evils that we hear of it, that’s one of the areas where it’s been really helpful.

Debbie:

Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I wanna talk for a few minutes about how you help parents kind of bridge the gap when they are charged with being their kids’ prefrontal cortex and they struggle with that themselves, but we’ll take a quick break and then we’ll get to that. So we talked earlier about the challenges of, you know, being a parent who struggles with executive function or systems or organizing and planning and then raising kids who also may have similar struggles. And sometimes we are charged with being that prefrontal cortex with being that person to set up the scaffolding. So I’m just wondering in your work with families, what do you find helps the most in terms of bridging that gap? Are there, I don’t know if there’s like some tried and true strategies or is it more about helping parents kind of feel differently about the way that they’re experiencing it?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Well, but I feel differently, think differently. So, how do I say this? I was a dutiful mom and parent, and I read all the parenting books and I did everything the experts were telling me to do and it didn’t work. And part of the reason it didn’t work is because my kids were neurodivergent and part of the reason it didn’t work is because I was neurodivergent. And what I’ve learned is that we, the word that’s coming to me as you were asking that question is permission. We have to give ourselves permission to do with the way that works for us and for our kids and to stop trying to hit everybody else’s expectations to stop, we have to shed the shoulds and just because my sister-in-law or my brother-in-law or my friend down the street does it a certain way, doesn’t mean that’s what it’s going to look like in my house. And I had to, I had to let go of living up to everybody else’s expectations, including the ones I thought I had set for myself, and really start meeting my kids where they were and myself. And so if that meant, here’s one of my favorite examples, is I tried to do one of those star charts, reward charts with all the points and all the things. And I mean, like the word consistency would shut me down like nobody’s business. And they always tell parents, you have to be consistent. Well, you know. I’m here to tell you consistency is good and it’s not everything. The point of a system is that a system is supposed to help you work towards a goal, but the system isn’t the goal. So consistency is going to help you achieve the goal of setting parameters or modeling for your kids or whatever, but it’s not the goal. Right. So I kind of lost my track for a minute. So consistency is not the goal. So star chart, so, or reward chart. The reward chart is not the goal.

It serves a purpose of helping have conversations with your kids and reward them and whatever. So I graduated in my mind, I think I have examples of it in my book from one of these really, really complicated reward charts with all these different bells and whistles and two points for this and minus points for that, to a very, very simple structure. I had a piece of paper with three columns on it, one kid’s name at the top of each column, and every time they did something good, I’d say, go give yourself two points. Extra two points if you kill a mosquito. So, you know, I let go of the complexity and I gave myself permission to make things simpler and to allow structure but to create some flexibility in the structure because we needed flexibility and we needed to be able to say this is what we do except for when we’re having a really bad day and then we shift to that or everybody’s doing their homework at this time, but this kid only has 45 minutes to do it because when they’re done, they’re done because they need to not work anymore than that. And so there was a lot of permission to do it my way, do it the way that worked for them or for me, to not do it all. I often say you can do it all, but not at the same time. Permission to not have all the laundry done, permission to not get all the homework done, or just sometimes be late to school or, and I know like some people are gonna hear me and think, wow, what a slacker. But the truth is, the most important thing we can do as parents, particularly when we have complex kids and particularly when we have complex issues ourselves is to stay connected and be in relationship with our kids and to build a trusting connected bond with our kids so that we can problem solve with them and they can problem solve with us and that they keep coming back to us to problem solve as they get older and life gets harder. And nothing else really matters as much as that because that’s what’s gonna keep them from experimenting with risky behaviors. That’s what’s gonna keep them, that’s gonna allow them to come to us when they’re trying to figure out how to not do something that their peers are pressuring them to do. Like it’s everything. It’s all about relationship, taking care of ourself and relationship.

Debbie:

Yes, I’m right there with you. I love that. I love that. And, you know, what I’m hearing you say, too, is that so many of the books and the systems and you know, the way that parents are, are guided in parenting, often will highlight areas of relative weakness in a neurodivergent parent. So just kind of I love that. Doing it your own way, questioning all those things and I imagine that’s where the internal work happens, right? And I know that that’s a lot about, that’s a lot of what you talk about in your book, The Essential Guide to Raising Complex Kids. You really talk about this, like reframing your experience and your thinking about things and giving that permission. So I love that so much. I wanna just, and I’m being conscious at the time here, but I wanna just make sure that we talk about the strengths because there are so many strengths that come with being someone who has ADHD and other learning disabilities. And I’m just wondering if what you’ve found has been, you know, has really supported and really strengthened your life as a parent and your family dynamic as a result of your ADHD.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Boom. Oh, I love that. Thank you. I was just thinking about somebody, one of my kids sent me the other day, some tick tock Instagram, some video of some woman saying, somebody asked, my family struggles with mental health issues. And my response was, no, we actually seem to enjoy it a lot. And and that’s really what I would say is my once I got a handle on it and understood what I was dealing with. Right. And coaching really helped me significantly reduce my anxiety. And managing my ADD significantly helped me reduce my anxiety. I learned and permission and all these other things we’ve been talking about, we started having fun with it. Like we stopped, we let go of the stigma. And we started being the barrel of monkeys that we were. And I started allowing the playfulness and the lightness and the creativity and the humor. I mean, there is no more entertaining place on the planet than my dinner table when my whole family’s there. I mean, it’s hysterical. So leaning into humor, allowing creative solutions were huge, taking aim on one thing at a time and trying not to do everything, but to model for them what I could, being transparent with them about what I was struggling with my ADD and how I was learning to manage it so that I wasn’t trying to be this perfect parent. And it’s really interesting. You can see the difference in my youngest and my oldest from where I was dealing with my stuff and how much better it was for my youngest after I had dealt with a lot of stuff than it was for my oldest when I was still kind of an anxious mess. So playing to the strength, the thing about having ADHD is that it really can be your superpower if you learn how to outsource the challenges, play to your strength and outsource the challenges. You got to outsource the challenges. You can’t just hide or pretend they’re going to go away or ignore them. You have to figure out how to navigate them. But then you play to the strengths. I mean, I think we are often, a lot of us are brilliant at handling a lot of different things, which this world requires of us right now. There’s deep empathy and compassion very, very often.

There’s a big picture capacity to see all these different connections and to see how they’re linked with each other. I mean, they’re extraordinary strengths and everybody with ADD is going to be different because all of our brains are wired differently. But we all have these incredible strengths and capacities. And when we play to them, I often say the solutions are in the successes and success breeds success. So when you help our kids or ourselves find success. In any little thing, you can extrapolate and map it out to other things. So that means if you help a 14 year old kid figure out what she did to plan a spend the night party with her friends, you can help her figure out how to get her homework done, but you have to see the value in what’s working instead of that tendency to take a deficit approach and only look at what’s not working. When what we pay attention to grows. And so when we pay attention to the strengths and we cultivate the strengths, I mean, one of my favorite examples is that my eldest kid, who was a tough kid to educate and raise, was a really good actor. And so I started putting them in acting classes in third grade, and I used to joke that it was just cheaper than therapy. Well, now they’re a professional actor. And that’s who they are in the world. And it was playing to their strengths, even though they could barely make it through a math class most years, right? But how could they, did they have all of these other strengths that I had to, not had to, that we capitalized on and cultivated and supported. That performance paradigm of we look for what’s broken and we make it better doesn’t work with our kids. We really need to look at what’s really good and enhance it and then accommodate, support them through the challenge areas. Like that kid was never gonna get an A in math and left the one year she loved the teacher, you know? And that’s okay.

Debbie:

That’s great. Thank you. Thanks for that example. And it’s just so hopeful. And it’s the vibe that we go for here too. Like we’re all about the strength space. So I love that. Can you tell us a little bit about, you have so many resources. So parents, I’m assuming you’re familiar with Elaine, but if you’re not, you need to check out Impact Parents, the podcast, with you, but also the different ways that you work with families and support parents walking this path.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Thanks, yeah. So we started in 2011. And what we knew then, Diane Dempster and I started what was Impact ADHD at the time, and that’s still around as well as Impact Parents, was that any parent who wanted to learn how to take what we call a coach approach to parenting should be able to have access to that. So a huge amount of what we do is free. And so for your listeners, we will give a parent’s guide, probably the, I don’t know what we’ll do, probably the top 12 coach approach tips. So they can go to impactparents.com slash tilt and download something for free. Most of the people in our community only ever get free resources from us. And then those who realize that this way of being can be really constructive and they want more.

We do training and we do a number of programs that combine training with some coaching and support. And then, you know, varying degrees of coaching as people, you know, depending on people’s budgets and their time and their capacity. So whether it’s a sanity school training, which is really a foundational training in what we call the coach approach to parenting, or our group coaching program where people get in there and they actually practice and work with it, or private coaching. The podcast, the book, I mean, there’s all these resources. We’ve been publishing a blog since 2011 and now a podcast called Parenting with Impact. So there’s our dream, our goal is to make sure that any parent who wants to access this approach to the world can do it in whatever way works for them, regardless of their budget, regardless of the way their brain is wired. We have scholarship programs. You know, it’s all designed to make it as affordable and accessible as possible because we know it’s effective. And we know that when parents, as you do at TILT, when parents focus on ourselves, when we turn our attention inward and focus on the parenting and the self in that role of parent, the cascading impact for our kids is profound. And what they really need from us is for us to take care of ourselves so we can be fully present to meeting them where they are and be able to help them grow in the way that they need best.

Debbie:

Yeah, it’s great listeners, I’m gonna have a pretty extensive show notes page for this episode. And I will have links to all the resources to the podcast to Elaine’s book, to the website, like there’s a lot to dive into. And I love that so many of the resources are free and accessible, and they’re really good resources. So thank you for that. And before we go, I’m just for the for parent who’s listening, who is just really in it right now, is feeling like they’re overwhelmed, they are stuck in kind of a cycle that they can’t get out of, what would you say to them to help them kind of feel that sense of like potential shift of possibility?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Hmm. So there are two things that come to mind. One is there are three words that can change your life. And those three words are up until now. Up until now, you’ve done the best you could with what you had, with the resources that were available, with what you knew. You’ve done the best you could. If you’re listening to this, that’s true for you. From here forward, you can choose different steps. You can take different action. You can take aim on one thing at a time. There are tips you got in just this 30 minute conversation. There’s so much available at Tilt Parenting. There’s so much available in Peck Parents. So the other thing I would say is ask for the help you need. You do not have to white knuckle this and try to do this alone. In fact, it’s just, it’s so hard to do this, much less do it alone. So model for your kids what they need to learn most, which is to learn how to ask for and accept help by getting some help for yourself. And there used to be an ad here, if you don’t get help here, get help somewhere, right? Just, it doesn’t matter where, start asking for the help you need and give yourself permission to get support and get some help in this journey, because our journey as parents of complex kids is to be with them on their journey. And sometimes it can be really hard to witness. So we need help and guidance and support to be able to be present to them while they figure out what it is they have to learn on their journey. Because sometimes it’s hard. And you can do it.

Debbie:

Mm hmm. Yeah. So good. Thank you. Thank you for that. That feels really good. Like in my soul, I kind of want a tattoo that says up until now because I needed a lot of reminders of that phrase. It’s super powerful.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Yeah. Can I just tell you a quick story about it? Because I’ve never shared this story. It was the very first speech I ever gave as a parent in this arena when I moved into the professional realm. The very first speech I ever gave was called up until now.

Debbie:

So powerful. Such a powerful reframe, those three words. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for this conversation for all that you do, and have been doing for so many years for our amazing complex humans that we have the honor and privilege of raising and for the way that you show up for our families. Thank you.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:

Thanks for having me, Debbie, and thanks for what you’re doing. It makes a difference.