You may think that this is a strange title from someone who is both the above - but since launching SENSE I think I have found my lane. 

If your child is newly diagnosed or you are in the process of getting a diagnosis of either autism, ADHD or combined AuDHD and you are frustrated by the generic advice and strategies, the lack of true bespoke support, then you have found the right page and the right person.

One of the first frustrations I often hear from parents of children with autism and/or ADHD is,

“I don’t know if I'm even doing it right, I feel like I’m letting them down most of the time.”

In this instance, exploring the parent feelings are valid and necessary, but the most profound impact comes from a little psychoeducation…

"My child's teacher says they're a delight at school, no trouble at all. So why are they screaming, crying, refusing homework, or diving into complete emotional eruption the moment they get home?"

If you've ever found yourself asking this question, you're not alone.

Many parents of neurodivergent children describe feeling confused, exhausted and sometimes even judged when they hear glowing reports from school, only to witness a very different child at home.

You've had a version of this morning before.

You gave a ten-minute warning. Then a five-minute warning. You laid their clothes out the night before, kept your voice calm, followed every piece of advice you've ever read. And still — still — it unravelled. The shoes became a crisis. The toast was wrong. By the time you got to the car you were fifteen minutes late, your child was in pieces, and you were holding yourself together by a thread, wondering what on earth you did to deserve this particular morning.

Someone recommended it — a colleague, a teacher, a thread in a parent forum — and it made perfect sense. Your child can't sit still. They fidget constantly, fiddle with everything, can never seem to just be in their body. So you bought the fidget toy. Maybe you bought three. The satisfying clicking one, the stretchy one, the weighted one that got a five-star review from a parent whose child apparently transformed overnight.

First it was fun. Then it was annoying and now the novelty has worn off and they still don’t focus (plus you’ve probably stood on it a few times.)

It's fast approaching midnight.  The house is finally quiet after another nightly battle with homework, bath and bedtime.

You're sitting with your phone, or maybe your laptop, and you're doing what you've done every night this week since the diagnosis landed: searching. ADHD symptoms in children. ADHD at school. How to help a child with ADHD focus. ADHD meltdowns what to do. One tab becomes ten. Ten becomes twenty. You're reading about dopamine, executive function, sensory processing, reward pathways — you understand ADHD better than most people you know, and yet you still have absolutely no idea what to do tomorrow morning when your child won't put his shoes on

Sound familiar?