ADHD Families Podcast

What happens when you can see your child needs support, and the other parent doesn’t believe ADHD is real?

In this episode of the ADHD Families Podcast, Sharon Collon sits down with Carolyn Tate, former parenting and health journalist, late-diagnosed ADHDer and founder of Women’s Divorce Academy. Over seven years, Carolyn has helped close to a thousand women through separation and divorce.

Carolyn shares her own story: the New Year’s Eve she knew her marriage was over, the overwhelm that stretched her divorcex out for years, and the two and a half years it took to get her daughter assessed and supported when her ex-husband wasn’t on board.

This is a practical conversation about co-parenting a child with ADHD after separation. No villains, no court battles. Just how to advocate for your child, when to stop trying to convince the other parent, how to handle two homes with two sets of rules, and how to look after yourself when you’re carrying most of the load.

If you’re separated, divorcing or thinking about it, and parenting a child with ADHD, this episode gives you a clear place to start.



👀 In This Episode, Sharon Covers

✅ Advocating for an ADHD diagnosis when your ex doesn’t accept it
✅ When to stop trying to convince the other parent and put that energy into your child
✅ What Carolyn’s ADHD gave her through separation
✅ Parallel parenting when you can’t co-parent together
✅ Two homes, two sets of rules: what you can and can’t control
✅ Why kids with ADHD are more adaptable than we give them credit for
✅ The financial disadvantage women face in divorce
✅ The biggest mistake Carolyn sees women make (taking legal advice from their ex)
✅ Where to put your energy when you’re carrying the invisible load
✅ Preventing burnout as a separated mum
✅ The unexpected positives women find twelve months on

This episode shares general information and lived experience, not legal advice. Please seek advice specific to your situation.


⏱️ Episode Timestamps

00:00 Welcome and why this episode
01:37 Meet Carolyn Tate
01:51 The moment Carolyn knew her marriage was ending
03:20 Overwhelm, delay and the undiagnosed ADHD brain
04:06 What ADHD gave Carolyn through separation
05:00 Carolyn’s work and Women’s Divorce Academy
06:12 The divorce disadvantage for women
08:06 Advocating for a diagnosis the other parent doesn’t accept
11:03 Why ADHD divides families
12:21 Parallel parenting after diagnosis
13:16 Advice when your ex rejects the diagnosis
16:05 Two homes, two sets of rules
17:32 Kids already navigate different rules every day
18:05 The biggest pain points women bring to divorce
19:29 What Carolyn would tell her past self
21:35 Where to put your limited energy
23:15 Looking after the mum
25:55 The unexpected positives of divorce
28:09 Women’s biggest fears about divorce
30:37 Support to call in
33:30 Final thoughts

Key Takeaways

Put your child at the centre of every decision, and let that guide where your energy goes.

You can’t force the other parent to agree. Be clear about your next steps and follow through.

Consistency in one home is enough. Build systems that work in yours.

Children are better off without ongoing conflict. Divorce itself isn’t what harms them.

Get advice early and build your support network. You don’t have to carry it alone.

Never take legal or financial advice from your ex.

Self-care is listening to what you need right now, not ticking another box.

What’s Coming? 👀 👀

Create a School Holiday Plan for Your ADHD Family

Six weeks off, no school structure, and a child whose brain runs on routine. This one-hour live workshop is for parents of children with ADHD who want the summer break planned before it starts.

We build your plan together, on the day:

Your daily rhythm for the holidays

Your activity jars, ready to go

A screen time approach the whole family can live with

Tuesday 10 November, 1.00pm to 2.00pm AEDT, live on Zoom
Your School Holiday Plan Pack arrives Saturday 7 November. Print it and fill it in with me live.
Can’t make it live? The replay is yours for 3 months, so it covers the whole break.

$97 AUD

SAVE YOUR SPOT

🔔 Next Steps & ADHD Resources

Carolyn Tate

Women’s Divorce Academy

Divorce with Carolyn podcast

Instagram

Books mentioned

The ADHD Effect on Marriage by Melissa Orlov

DIRTY LAUNDRY: Why adults with ADHD are so ashamed and what we can do to help
by Mr Richard Pink (Author)

Related episodes

Episode 77: Should I Medicate My Child? What Parents Need to Know Before Deciding

Episode 72: What to Do First After an ADHD Diagnosis

Episode 43: Balancing Love and ADHD: Guidance for Couples

Subscribe to the ADHD Families Podcast

Join the waitlist for the ADHD Family Quest

Learn more at thefunctionalfamily.com

💛 Work With Sharon

Sharon Collon is a PCC Credentialed ADHD Coach and Parenting Consultant, Founder of The Functional Family and Host of the ADHD Families Podcast.

Through The Functional Family, Sharon has supported more than 40,000 families with practical strategies designed to work with the ADHD brain, not against it.

Her work helps families move away from daily chaos, overwhelm and survival mode and towards more connection, function and fun.

Build it for your worst day, not your best one.

You are too important to stay in survival mode.

***Join Managing Sibling Conflict & ADHD Session***

Why does one child seem to know exactly how to push their sibling’s buttons, then keep going until the whole house explodes?

Sibling baiting is incredibly common in ADHD families. It can look small from the outside. Standing too close to a prized possession. Making a particular noise. Saying the one thing they know will get a reaction. But underneath that behaviour, there can be much more going on.

In this episode, Credentialed ADHD family Coach Sharon Collon is joined by registered Psychologist Jacquie Ward to unpack why ADHD sibling conflict can escalate so quickly and why focusing on who started it often makes things worse.

They explore boredom and low-arousal states, rejection sensitivity, fairness, emotional regulation and the role parents can unintentionally play when they step in as the referee.

Because when the same fights happen again and again, the answer is not another lecture about being nice to each other. It is understanding the predictable pattern and knowing what to do when it starts.

👀 In This Episode, Sharon Covers

✅ What sibling baiting and “rage baiting” actually look like

✅ Why an ADHD brain may seek stimulation by provoking a sibling

✅ How boredom and low-arousal states can contribute to conflict

✅ Why rejection sensitivity can turn a small interaction into a huge emotional reaction

✅ How asking “Who started it?” can intensify the conflict

✅ Why ADHD children’s strong sense of fairness can make arguments harder to resolve

✅ The difference between being the family referee and becoming the competent captain

✅ Why being steady is often more useful than trying to make everything fair

✅ How to recognise the predictable patterns behind recurring sibling fights

✅ Why having scripts ready matters when you are dysregulated too

The Real Problem With Sibling Conflict

The hardest part is often not the argument itself.

It is feeling like you are dealing with the same fight on repeat.

One child baits.
The other reacts.
Someone explodes.
You step in and try to establish what happened.
Everyone argues about what is fair.
You become dysregulated too.

Then, the next day, it happens all over again.

In the heat of the moment, it can be incredibly difficult to remember the parenting strategy you intended to use. You might start gently, become stricter, raise your voice, separate everyone and then wonder afterwards what you could have done differently.

Sharon and Jacquie explain why the goal is not a home where siblings never fight.

The goal is to understand the pattern, know how to interrupt it and have a clear playbook for what to do next.

⏱️ Episode Timestamps

00:00 Sharon’s childhood sibling-baiting story
01:15 Why sibling baiting is so common in ADHD families
02:35 What is baiting and rage baiting?
03:37 What baiting looks like at home
04:46 Why the obvious trigger is not always the real problem
05:43 Rejection sensitivity and ADHD sibling conflict
06:44 Why a small poke can become a 40-minute meltdown
07:25 What happens when parents ask, “Who started it?”
08:13 The problem with becoming the family referee
09:12 The competent captain approach
10:39 Why steadiness matters more than perfect fairness
12:05 Staying regulated when your children are not
12:43 The two-day sibling conflict observation exercise
13:57 Identifying predictable problems
15:23 Why parents need practical scripts
15:59 What success with sibling conflict actually looks like
17:55 Advice for parents after a difficult day

🎯 Sibling Conflict Workshop

If you are constantly breaking up fights, figuring out who started it, or dealing with explosive reactions, join Sharon Collon and Jacquie Ward for the Managing Sibling Conflict & ADHD Workshop on 11 October, 1pm to 4pm AEDT. You’ll learn what is really driving the conflict, how to step out of the referee role, and get practical scripts and a clear playbook for handling sibling fights with more confidence, shortening the conflict and supporting better repair.

Book before 10pm AEDT Wednesday 7 October and you'll also get our Sibling Baiting and ADHD Scripts, eight scripts from Jacquie and me, valued at $197, free.

👉 Join the Sibling Conflict Workshop

📱 Screentime + ADHD Workshop

If screentime is another source of daily arguments, difficult transitions or emotional blow-ups in your family, join Sharon for the Screentime + ADHD Workshop on 13 October at 1pm.

Learn how to approach screentime with the ADHD brain in mind and walk away with practical strategies you can use at home.

Usually $197, now reduced to $97.

Join Sharon and turn another predictable family friction point into something you feel better equipped to handle.

👉 Save your spot!

🔔 Next Steps & ADHD Resources

Subscribe to the ADHD Families Podcast

Explore practical ADHD family support and resources from The Functional Family

Share this episode with a parent who has read everything and is still stuck

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

💛 Work With Sharon

Sharon Collon is a PCC Credentialed ADHD Coach and Parenting Consultant, Founder of The Functional Family and Host of the ADHD Families Podcast.

Through The Functional Family, Sharon has supported more than 40,000 families with practical strategies designed to work with the ADHD brain, not against it.

Her work helps families move away from daily chaos, overwhelm and survival mode and towards more connection, function and fun.

Build it for your worst day, not your best one.

You are too important to stay in survival mode.

***Join the ADHD Family Quest***

How many tabs about ADHD do you have open right now?

On your phone, on your laptop. The one about dopamine. The one about demand avoidance. The routine chart someone swore by at 11pm.

You are not short on information about ADHD. You could probably explain executive function better than your GP can. And your Tuesday morning at 7:40am still falls apart.

That gap between everything you know and what actually happens in your house is not a knowledge problem. In this episode, Sharon Collon breaks down the two traps almost every ADHD family gets stuck in: knowledge farming, where you collect information you cannot implement, and system farming, where you buy the visual schedule, the magnetic chore chart and the beautiful Etsy printable, and it dies within a fortnight anyway.

She tells the story of two families who photographed the washing chart in her laundry, and why she already knew standing there that it would not work in their houses. Then she gives you the one shift that changes how you build anything at home from here: build the system for your worst day, not your best one.

👀 In This Episode, Sharon Covers:

Why you can know everything about ADHD and still not be able to run a Tuesday morning

Knowledge farming, and why information gives you the what but almost never the how

System farming, and why the chart you set up on Sunday is dead by the second week

What parents wrongly conclude about themselves when a routine falls over

Why a bought or copied system arrives with no household attached to it

The hidden 95% of decisions underneath any system that actually works

Why every household has its own physics, and why that breaks borrowed routines

The one shift: designing for a low capacity day instead of your most optimistic one

Why getting started, stopping something enjoyable and holding a three step instruction are all skills

How missing skills get mistaken for defiance, laziness and a child who does not care

Kate’s story: how a Sunday that ran like a military operation became three steps done before lunch

Why “get ready for the week” is a category, not a job, and why that causes paralysis

Why one bad Sunday no longer takes Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday down with it

Why it is called The Functional Family, and what Sharon is actually building towards

🧭 The Three Questions to Run This Week

Pick one thing you have been trying to make stick. Not all of them. One.

Does this work if I am not in the room? If it never will, what you have is not a system. It is a performance that needs you as the lead actor, and your child has not learned anything, because the thing doing the work is you.

Does this still work on a bad day? If it needs everyone calm, regulated and cooperative to function, it is not a system. It is a good mood.

What skill is actually missing for my child here? Name the missing skill and two things change. You stop taking it personally, and you stop building systems that punish a child for something they cannot do yet.

The biggest takeaway?

The system is not there to make a child comply. It is there to do the job your child’s brain cannot do yet, so they can practise the rest without failing every single day while they learn.

⏱️ Episode Timestamps

00:00 — How many ADHD tabs do you have open right now
01:15 — The gap between what you know and what happens at 7:40am
02:10 — Trap one: knowledge farming
04:00 — Trap two: system farming, and what you conclude when the chart fails
05:45 — The question Sharon wants you to answer for yourself
06:30 — The washing chart story: two families, two phones
08:45 — Why every household has its own physics
11:00 — The shift: build for your worst day, not your best one
12:45 — Question one: does it work when you are not in the room?
14:00 — Question two: does it work on a bad day?
15:00 — Question three: what skill is actually missing?
16:45 — Why getting started and stopping are skills, not attitude
18:15 — Kate’s story: getting Sunday back
21:00 — Why it is called The Functional Family
22:45 — The bridge between knowledge you cannot use and systems that will not hold
24:15 — “I think I need one to one coaching”, answered honestly
25:45 — What to do this week

🚀 Ready to Map the Friction in Your Family?

As you have heard in this episode, the problem was never that you did not know enough. It is that information cannot tell you which friction point to fix first in your particular house.

That is exactly what we will do in my FREE ADHD Family System online workshop. In sixty minutes you will build your own one page Family Friction Map and see exactly where your house is losing time and energy.

100% free. No cost, no catch.

📅 1 September — 7pm AEST
📅 4 September — 1pm AEST
📅 8 September — 7pm AEST

🔗 Save Your Free Spot

💫 Ready to Go Further?

If you are ready to turn what you have uncovered into practical change, The ADHD Family Quest is my four-week, coaching-led experience designed to help you build systems that work with your ADHD family, not against it.

It is the unglamorous middle bit nobody sells you. The bridge between knowledge you cannot implement and systems that will not hold.

Inside the Quest you get a private 30 minute one to one onboarding call with me so you start on the right friction point, five checkpoint playbooks with the templates already built, videos under five minutes with one action step each, three monthly group coaching sessions with me for the days it wobbles, and three months of access to the app and every resource.

September Spotlight bonus: enrol by 10pm AEST on Monday 8 September and you also get the live Friction Map group coaching session with me on Thursday 10 September, where we map your household’s friction points together and decide what to do about them. The Quest is open all year. This bonus is not.

Because you were never supposed to be the system holding everything together.

🔗 Secure Your Spot

🔔 Next Steps & ADHD Resources

Subscribe to the ADHD Families Podcast

Explore practical ADHD family support and resources from The Functional Family

Share this episode with a parent who has read everything and is still stuck

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

💛 Work With Sharon

Sharon Collon is a PCC Credentialed ADHD Coach and Parenting Consultant, Founder of The Functional Family and Host of the ADHD Families Podcast.

Through The Functional Family, Sharon has supported more than 40,000 families with practical strategies designed to work with the ADHD brain, not against it.

Her work helps families move away from daily chaos, overwhelm and survival mode and towards more connection, function and fun.

Build it for your worst day, not your best one.

You are too important to stay in survival mode.

Week one, the reward chart is magic.

Your child is racing to the fridge for their gold star. The school bag is actually being put away. Nobody is nagging. Nobody is arguing. And you think, finally, THIS is the thing that is going to change our family.

Then week two arrives.

The magnets are missing. The stickers are on the floor. Nobody cares about the chart anymore and another beautifully laminated parenting system gets shoved into the kitchen drawer where hope goes to die.

So, why do reward charts seem to work brilliantly for children with ADHD, until suddenly they don’t?

In this episode, Sharon explains why reward charts often clash with the way the ADHD brain experiences motivation, novelty and time, and why the answer isn't becoming more consistent, finding a bigger reward or buying an even fancier chart.

You'll also learn what works instead: designing simple systems and environments that make the behaviour you want the easiest, most obvious next step.

👀 In This Episode, Sharon Covers:

Why reward charts work brilliantly at first, then suddenly stop

How novelty drives motivation for the ADHD brain

Why delayed rewards often lose their motivational pull

Sharon's rule: "The ADHD brain pays in cash, not credit"

Why this isn't about laziness, willpower or parental consistency

The gap between knowing what to do and being able to do it

Why changing the environment can work better than adding another reward

How to make the behaviour you want easier and more obvious

Where rewards can still be useful for children with ADHD

How to start with one small friction point in your family

⏱️ Episode Timestamps

00:00 Why reward charts work, until they don't

02:30 Sharon's reward chart graveyard

03:45 Why novelty motivates the ADHD brain

05:30 The problem with delayed rewards

06:30 The ADHD brain pays in cash, not credit

09:15 Why this isn't a willpower problem

11:00 Look at what already works in your family

12:30 Why systems work better than reward charts

14:15 Remove barriers and make the behaviour easier

17:00 Where rewards still fit and what to try this week



🚀 Ready to Stop Managing Behaviour and Start Building Systems?

If your house is full of abandoned charts, half used planners and systems that worked beautifully, until they didn't, this is exactly the work we're doing inside my FREE ADHD Family System online workshop.

We'll map the friction points in your family and start looking at how to change the environment around them, so daily life isn't dependent on everybody remembering, staying motivated and having a good day at exactly the same time.

Because you don't need another prettier chart.

You need a system that can hold your family on the hard days too.

100% free. No cost, no catch.

📅 1 September, 7pm
📅 4 September, 1pm
📅 8 September, 7pm

🔗 Save Your Free Spot

💫 Ready to Go Further?

If you’re ready to turn what you’ve uncovered into practical change, The ADHD Family Quest is my four-week, coaching-led experience designed to help you build systems that work with your ADHD family, not against it.

Because you were never supposed to be the system holding everything together.

Places are limited.

🔗 Secure Your Spot

🔔 Next Steps & ADHD Resources

Subscribe to the ADHD Families Podcast

Explore practical ADHD family support and resources from The Functional Family

Share this episode with another parent who wonders why their child saves their biggest emotions for home

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify - it helps more ADHD families find the podcast

💛 Work With Sharon

Sharon Collon is a PCC Credentialed ADHD Coach and Parenting Consultant, Founder of The Functional Family and Host of the ADHD Families Podcast.

Through The Functional Family, Sharon has supported more than 40,000 families with practical strategies designed to work with the ADHD brain, not against it.

Her work helps families move away from daily chaos, overwhelm and survival mode and towards more connection, function and fun.

You do not need to spend more money on a better chart.

You need an environment that supports the action.

They held it together all day.

The teacher says they were fine. Maybe they even had a great day.

Then they walk through the front door and within 10 minutes, everything falls apart. The bag gets thrown. There are tears over the wrong snack. A sibling looks at them the wrong way. Something tiny turns into a full meltdown that wipes out the entire evening.

So why does your child with ADHD manage all day at school — then completely unravel at home?

In this episode, Sharon explains after-school restraint collapse and why home is often the place where children finally release everything they’ve been holding together all day.

You’ll also learn why the first 30 minutes after school need their own system, what to do when your child is already dysregulated, and why planning for siblings, snacks, sensory input and your own capacity can completely change the afternoon.

👀 In This Episode, Sharon Covers:

Why ADHD children can hold it together at school and fall apart at home

What after-school restraint collapse actually is

The signs that “bad behaviour” may actually be dysregulation

Why the ADHD brain can arrive home completely out of fuel

How medication rebound may affect the after-school window

Why reasoning, consequences and explanations don’t work mid-meltdown

What to do instead when your child is emotionally flooded

Why the first 30 minutes after school matter so much

How to create an automatic decompression space

Why the first 20 minutes should be a low-demand window

How your first greeting can either lower or increase demand

Why siblings need their own after-school plan

How to design the 3–5pm window for the whole family, not just the child with ADHD

When worsening after-school meltdowns may be a sign that something else has shifted

The biggest takeaway?

After-school collapse isn’t random. It’s predictable. And predictable problems can be planned for.

⏱️ Episode Timestamps

00:00 — Why your child falls apart the moment they get home
01:20 — Why ADHD kids hold it together at school and release at home
02:30 — What after-school restraint collapse actually is
03:35 — When “bad behaviour” is actually dysregulation
04:20 — Why afternoons need a completely different system
05:15 — Medication rebound and the after-school window
06:00 — What to do when your child is already melting down
07:10 — Building the crucial first 30 minutes after school
08:15 — Decompression, no demands and the after-school handover
09:25 — Why siblings need an after-school plan too
10:15 — Designing the 3–5pm window for the whole family
11:20 — When worsening meltdowns are telling you something has shifted
12:05 — Put the 3pm crash on your family’s Friction Map

🚀 Ready to Map the Friction in Your Family?

As you’ve heard in this episode, after-school meltdowns aren’t random, they’re predictable. And when we can see the patterns creating friction, we can start building systems that actually support the whole family.

That’s exactly what we’ll do in my FREE ADHD Family System online workshop. You’ll start creating your own Family Friction Map and identify where small changes could make family life feel a whole lot easier.

100% free. No cost, no catch.

📅 1 September — 7pm
📅 4 September — 1pm
📅 8 September — 7pm

🔗 Save Your Free Spot

💫 Ready to Go Further?

If you’re ready to turn what you’ve uncovered into practical change, The ADHD Family Quest is my four-week, coaching-led experience designed to help you build systems that work with your ADHD family, not against it.

Because you were never supposed to be the system holding everything together.

Places are limited.

🔗 Secure Your Spot

🔔 Next Steps & ADHD Resources

Subscribe to the ADHD Families Podcast

Explore practical ADHD family support and resources from The Functional Family

Share this episode with another parent who wonders why their child saves their biggest emotions for home

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify - it helps more ADHD families find the podcast

💛 Work With Sharon

Sharon Collon is a PCC Credentialed ADHD Coach and Parenting Consultant, Founder of The Functional Family and Host of the ADHD Families Podcast.

Through The Functional Family, Sharon has supported more than 40,000 families with practical strategies designed to work with the ADHD brain, not against it.

Her work helps families move away from daily chaos, overwhelm and survival mode and towards more connection, function and fun.

Predictable means mappable. And mappable means you can get ahead of it.

You are too important to stay in survival mode.