If This Is the Year You Stop Blaming Yourself, Everything Changes

If you are parenting a child with ADHD, the start of a new year can feel less like a fresh beginning and more like another quiet reckoning. Coming out of the holidays, you may have rested but are still feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and wondering why parenting still feels so hard despite everything you’ve tried.

Imagine this… It’s 11:47pm on December 31st.
You’re standing in your kitchen.

The house is finally quiet. Your children are asleep after another intense holiday day that didn’t go quite as planned.

There were tears. Raised voices. Dysregulation that escalated faster than you could contain it.
Promises made and broken. Again.

You scroll through your phone, past messages about fresh starts, better habits, new routines.

And you make the same promise to yourself that you make every year.

This year, I will be better.
More patient. More organised. More in control.
This year, I’ll finally get it right.

You believe it in your mind, even as your nervous system tells a different story.

The Quiet Grief No One Talks About

Many parents of neurodivergent children enter January carrying something heavy.

Not just exhaustion.
Grief.

The kind that sounds like, “I thought I would be better at this by now.”

Grief for the calm family moments that still feel out of reach.
Grief for the parent you imagined you would be.
Grief for how much effort it takes just to get through an ordinary day while parenting a child with ADHD.

This grief often goes unnamed.
Instead, it turns inward as shame.

Why is this still so hard?
Why does everyone else seem to cope?
Why can’t I make this work?

If this sounds familiar, I want to let you know that raising a neurodivergent child is hard.

Not because your child is difficult or because you aren’t doing enough.

But because you have been trying to parent a neurodivergent dysregulated nervous system using tools designed for regulated ones.

When Behaviour Is Actually Dysregulation

ADHD is not a discipline problem.
It is not laziness.
It is not a lack of effort, from your child or from you.

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental difference that affects emotional regulation, impulse control, working memory, stress response and time perception to name just a few (there are 12 in fact). This is why emotional dysregulation sits at the centre of so many daily struggles at home.

The holidays make this especially visible.

Routines disappear.
Sleep shifts.
Expectations rise.
Stimulation increases.

For an ADHD nervous system, this often pushes a child far outside their window of tolerance.

What looks like defiance is often overwhelm.
What looks like refusal is often nervous system overload.
What looks like “not listening” is often a brain that cannot organise itself quickly enough to respond.

And when this happens repeatedly, parents do what caring parents do.

They try harder.
They explain more.
They control more.
They carry more.

They become the emotional regulator, the planner, the buffer and the fixer.

Until they burn out.

Why Trying Harder Isn’t the Answer

January often brings renewed effort: stricter routines, firmer consequences, higher expectations.

But for ADHD families, effort without understanding often makes things worse.

Because regulation must come before behaviour can change.

Neuroscience is clear: when a child feels safe and regulated, access to learning, flexibility and cooperation improves.
Without regulation, no amount of control creates lasting change.

This is why so many well-intentioned parenting strategies fail ADHD brains and why parents are left blaming themselves when they don’t work.

The issue is not your commitment.
It’s the lens you’ve been given.

A Different Way to Start the Year

For families parenting a child with ADHD, the real reset is clarity.

Clarity about how your child’s nervous system works.
Clarity about why certain patterns keep repeating.
Clarity about what actually supports regulation and what unintentionally escalates it.

When understanding replaces control, something shifts.

You stop asking, “What am I doing wrong?”
And start asking, “What does my child need in order to feel safe and capable?”

This is not about lowering expectations.
It is about setting the right ones, ones your child’s brain can realistically meet.

When Blame Falls Away, Change Becomes Possible

When parents stop blaming themselves, they stop parenting from fear.

They respond instead of react.
They choose support over punishment.
They build environments that work with the ADHD brain, not against it.

Children feel this shift quickly.

Not because everything becomes easy but because they are no longer treated as the problem.

Parents feel it too.

Less tension.
Less shame.
More clarity.

This is what sustainable change actually looks like.

This Is the Year Everything Changes

If the holidays left you depleted, overwhelmed or questioning yourself, let this be the year you do something different.

Not another resolution.
Not another attempt to try harder.

This is the year to stop asking what is wrong with your child
and start asking what support do they need?

If this sounds like your family, you do not need another promise to yourself.

You need clarity, guidance and support that is grounded in how ADHD brains actually work.

If you’re ready to explore what that could look like, book a support call with a member of our team to see whether our 12-week Stability & Clarity Reset is the right fit for your family.