What do you do when your ADHD kid heads off to college — and you’re still learning to let go?

That’s the question at the center of this episode of Parenting with Impact, where hosts Elaine Taylor-Klaus and Diane Dempster sit down with Andrea, a longtime member of the ImpactParents community, for one of their favorite kinds of conversations: a success story.

Andrea’s daughter was diagnosed with ADHD right after middle school, after years of Andrea and her husband hoping they could “fix it” on their own. That diagnosis kicked off a journey that’s taken them from a rocky start to high school, through a pandemic, and into the leap to college, all while parenting a daughter with ADHD and anxiety.

What makes this conversation land isn’t a single breakthrough moment. It’s the repetition. Andrea describes finding ImpactParents and Sanity School® for Parents as a “true north” — something she’s had to return to again and again, through parenting groups and workshops, gleaning something new each time. That’s a core part of the coach approach to parenting Elaine and Diane teach: this isn’t a one-and-done fix. It’s an ongoing practice.

Why does letting go feel so hard when your kid has ADHD?

For Andrea, dropping her daughter off at college — just 20 minutes away — was terrifying. What helped was connecting with other parents in her group who were navigating the same fear. She talks openly about learning to hold two roles at once: giving her daughter room to take charge, while staying close enough to catch her if needed.

What does it mean to grieve the kid you expected?

One of the most powerful threads in this conversation is Andrea’s honesty about grieving — giving herself permission to let go of the child she thought she’d have, so she could make room to celebrate the child she actually has. She also talks about “fix-it mode,” the instinct to search for the one answer that solves everything, and how she had to unlearn that entirely.

Key takeaways from this episode:

• Progress in parenting a complex kid isn’t a straight line — Andrea describes it as hiking up a mountain, where some days you might take two or three steps back but you’re still climbing.
• Leading with acknowledgment before correction changes the relationship — Andrea makes a habit of naming what her daughter did well before addressing what went wrong.
• Grieving the expectations you had for your child is part of the process, not a sign of failure, and it makes room for real acceptance.
• Taking care of yourself — for Andrea, that’s an early morning workout — isn’t selfish; it’s what gives you capacity to show up for your kid.
• Success doesn’t mean having it all together. You can be a work in progress and still be doing an amazing job.

Andrea also opens up about how the coaching tools she learned through ImpactParents showed up in an entirely different part of her life — caring for her mother through dementia — and how her daughter’s ADHD-driven creative thinking became an unexpected gift during that time.

This is a conversation about the long game of parenting: not arriving somewhere, but building capacity, one repeated lesson at a time.

P.S. — If this conversation resonated, Andrea’s story started in Sanity School® for Parents, the same coach-approach program Elaine and Diane reference throughout this episode.

What to expect in this episode:

• Andrea shares how her ADHD diagnosis journey with her daughter began after a difficult middle school experience and evolved through high school, the pandemic, and the transition to college.
• Listeners will hear a practical reframe for staying connected to a young adult child: giving them room to lead while remaining close enough to offer support when it’s needed.
• The episode offers a clear example of leading with acknowledgment before correction, and why that shift changes the tone of a parent-child relationship.
• Andrea describes the process of grieving the child she expected in order to make room to fully embrace the child she has, a theme she and the hosts return to throughout the conversation.
• The conversation shows how caregiving for a parent with dementia and parenting a child with ADHD can draw on the same coaching tools and the same core skill: letting go of what you can’t control.

Parenting a Young Adult With ADHD: A Real Success Story

Related Links:

• High-Conflict Divorce to Co-Parenting Peace: A Real Success Story
• Success! Coaching Group Members Share Powerful Stories
• Parent Mentor Success Story: Calm, Connection, And Growth That Lasts

Our Discussion

Elaine: When you’re parenting complex kids, sometimes what you really want is a true north, is a guide for getting you from stage to stage, ’cause it’s not enough to have a solution for when they’re five or 15, but you need it for when they’re 20 and 25 and beyond Welcome back everybody to another conversation in the Parenting with Impact podcast.  Today we get to have one of my absolutely favorite things to do on this podcast, and that’s a success story. So welcome Andrea. Thank you for being here with us. 

Andrea: Thanks for having me. 

Elaine: And, um, and today we get to kind of step into a conversation about, um, what happens when you get support, when you get guidance, how it changes how you show up as a parent, not just at the moment, but over time. And, and that’s really what I think is so powerful about this, about this framework, is that once we get it, we use it kind of everywhere in our lives, with our kids, with our parents, with our colleagues. So Andrea, it’s great to have you here. And, um, Diane, do you wanna kind of kick us off into our relationship with Andrea since she’s been more, working more closely with you?

Diane: Yeah, no, um, I’m just, I’m excited Andrea to have you here because I think about the progress and the successes you’ve had over the years. I mean, you started with us when your kiddo was in high school. Now they’re off at college and you’re dealing with what, how to do long distance stuff, how to do stuff when they’re home for the summers.  It’s just you’ve got so many adventures that you’re dealing with. I think the question is, like you use the word true north. It’s a sort of how is it that you’re using the tools and the, and the information that you’ve been learning, and, and what’s been m- most impactful for you? 

Elaine: Well, before you answer, here’s what I want to say. I didn’t make up the term true north. Andrea gave it to us before we started. Yeah. That’s right. So Andrea, share again what you were saying that kind of kicked us off. 

Andrea: So Elaine, Diane, the whole of Impact Parents has really been a true north for me through this process. I mean, I have an amazing kid. I love her so much. From the minute she arrived on this planet screaming bloody murder for a literal six months day and night. It has been on like Donkey Kong, as they would say. And finding the both of you and Impact Parents has been gold for me because there’s so many different things happening all the time. And you know, I went through sanity school, which was awesome. That’s, but that’s like a giant delicious cake. You cannot eat the whole thing at once and digest it. So doing things like the parent group, the, the workshops, has helped me with the repetition of going over things. Each time I glean a different nugget When I feel like I’m losing my way a little bit, you guys are my true north. Like, my parent group with Diane kind of gets the… you know, straightens the car out a little bit on the track each time I do that. And I’ve just found it so, so helpful, ’cause I’m working on all these struggles with my daughter, challenges and successes, in real time with assistance, which is huge.

Elaine: Yeah. 

Diane: Well, one of the things, I mean, I’m aware of is that your kiddo is, is an adult kiddo, right? And it’s a sort of… That’s a big part of what you’ve been navigating is the shift from my kid is under 18, in my purview, uh, and I’ve got all these tools that I’ve been using to help her with complexities, and now she’s long distance, sometimes at home, sometimes not. I mean, so talk about that transition and what it’s been like to shift to parenting a young adult. 

Andrea: It was so terrifying to drop her off at college. ‘Cause I was like, “Will she remember to take her meds?” I mean, you know, just little things that are so critical. Um, and thank God that’s when I discovered the parent group, because I was with other people who were going through that, and I learned some tips and tricks from them. I learned how to let go, you know on some things that she really did need to start handling. That distance helped us. And by the way, distance for us is her dorm was, like, 20 minutes down the road from our house. So she didn’t wanna be too far, and that was actually perfect, because she knew there was a net, but it wasn’t right underneath her. Yeah. So I just had to let go and let her take charge of as much as possible, but also know I had a kid who had some challenges, that it wasn’t fair to just drop her into the deep end of the pool and hope it worked out, ’cause that wasn’t gonna work either. So it was sort of playing between those roles of director and, you know, all those kinds of different roles that I kept swimming in between. Um, it was just huge to have Impact Parents, and particularly the other parents in our group, who kind of felt where I was. 

Elaine: Well, if I’ve got the story correct, you didn’t start there. You started when she was, when she was an teenager, right? 

Andrea: Yes. 

Elaine: And so, and I love that metaphor of it’s a giant cake. Thank you for that. That’s really good. Yeah. So when you first started, she was still under your roof. 

Andrea: Mm-hmm. 

Elaine: And, and so it was about kind of learning how to communicate differently, to relate differently. Talk a little bit about those early years. 

Andrea: So we chose, my husband and I did not have our daughter diagnosed until right after middle school. You know, we just were afraid of the stigma. We thought, “Oh, we can fix this,” and it just wasn’t working. So we had her assessed, and she was diagnosed with ADHD, uh, pretty hardcore. And, um, you know, which we were like, “Okay, well, that makes sense,” ’cause we really wanted her to have a good start in high school. We’d struggled with teachers, with all kinds of help to try to help her through middle school, which was kind of a hot nightmare. So we get into high school, and then the pandemic hit. So that added a whole nother level of holy cow to the pie. Um, but again, working with these tricks and tips in Sanity School helped me. Perspective shift was huge because I am, in fact, our family text chat is called Hermione on Ensemble. My daughter says I am Hermione Granger, and I am type A. I work hard, worked hard in school, nothing less than an A, and then I had this kid who’s, like, the polar opposite. And I’m like, “Pushing her isn’t gonna work. Challenging her to be like me is not gonna work. But I don’t know what is gonna work.”  Finding Sanity School and doing those perspective shifts really helped me to see there’s another way that’s okay. She is not going to make straight As, and yet she is still so smart and amazing, and it is okay 

Diane: Well, and I know one of the things that you’ve worked really hard at is inspiring her to step into who she is, right? And figure out what it is that she loves and what she’s good at. You were telling a story the other day in group about her teaching you something that she knew that you didn’t, and it was just such a beautiful story. Do you wanna tell, tell it here? 

Andrea: Yeah. She is such a great teacher. She really… She’s so patient and kind, and she was working at this, um, doll camp for little girls, and they asked me to come in to talk about writing and investigative reporting. And so I went in to chat with them, and I was a little nervous, ’cause I don’t do little kids really. And she was so sweet with talking to me about, “Okay, Mom, now you’re gonna wanna have some, you know, things for them to hold or look at. You’re gonna wanna do this. You’re gonna… Could you mention that, because we’re struggling with them behavior-wise with the…” She was just so patient and lovely, and so proud of me when I came in and talked and I did a good job. She was like, “Mom, you did great.” And it just felt wonderful for me to be the one in the uncertain territory, and her to, you know, have it together and know what was going on. ‘Cause I, I’d love for her to have those experiences where finally she’s not the one everybody’s looking at, “Why are you late? Why can’t you get it together? Why don’t you look like you’re paying attention?” She had the upper hand, and I loved it so much. 

Elaine: I just got chills with that. It’s such a beautiful story. And, you know, one of the things we do in, in our group sessions, actually in our private sessions probably too, but definitely in our group sessions, is we always start with celebrations. And, you know, truly sometimes the celebrations are in the messes. Sometimes we have to look there. But we always, we take the time to stop and look at what’s working, because it’s really easy to only focus on what’s not working. And it sounds like that, that’s a way that you look at, that’s, that’s a way that you approach your relationship with her now.

Andrea: Exactly. And I always try to start with something she did well that I appreciated, that I liked. You know, um, if I’m trying to correct her is, like, such a terrible term. I don’t mean it that way. But when I’m trying to help her realize, you know, where something went wrong or, I always try to lead with something she did well. You know, ’cause I just feel like what I wanna do is build on what she’s doing well, ’cause she has so many amazing talents and strengths. I wanna build on those instead of constantly hammering on the other stuff. ‘Cause she hears plenty of that. I don’t remember who it is in one of you guys’ workshops talked about the wall of awful. And I thought, “God, my daughter…

Elaine:  Brendan Mahon. Yeah. Yeah, he’s got a book coming out on it this year 

Andrea: That term really rang for me because I realized she gets pounded on by people all the time about things she can’t help. And so I really, really love to be able to highlight what she’s doing well to help her build on that instead of being one more person who pounds on her.

Diane: Well, and I wanna say that I’m guessing you haven’t always been like that, so those of you who are listening know that this is something that Andrea’s worked really hard to rewire. And you were talking earlier about the tendency that we all have, which is like, you know, I see myself in my kid. I, like, how do I help them do the things that I’ve done or experience the way that I’ve experienced or learn the way that I’ve learned? And that’s part of what you’ve really worked to unravel is this kid is completely different than me, and how do I help her figure out her brilliance? And, and so I wanna compliment you on that because I know it’s, it’s been something you’ve worked on.

Andrea: Well, thank you. Yeah, and rest assured to everybody listening, I have had so many meltdowns. I have walked out in my backyard and just wailed crying and had to call my husband or my dad. Like, I don’t know what to do, you know, because it just, it’s a lot. It’s a lot. 

Elaine: Sometimes it is. So you talked about starting with positive and acknowledgement, right? Leading your conversations with your daughter before you do, go into redirection, leading with acknowledgement, which is something we talk about in Sanity School. How are you different from how you were before? 

Andrea: Oh, Lord have mercy. So different. Like I said, I’m like Capricorn, type A, I mean, high-strung, you name it, you know?

Diane: I didn’t know you were a Capricorn. Oh, that just explains so much. 

Andrea: Oh, big time. And, you know, my dad was a Marine, so if you were not 30 minutes early, you are late. 

Elaine: Yep. 

Andrea: And I have a child who was late to everything. It, it… I really, really had to learn so much patience. And honestly, and I wish I had known this when she was a baby with colic, one of the biggest things I have needed is to sometimes get away. Do something for me to take care of me, because that fills my well to be able to help her. Um, Diane knows I started during, doing burn boot camp in the mornings, which is a workout that absolutely kicks my tail. It’s perfect. It’s out of the house, so I’m away when everybody’s doing the rush of leaving the house, and I’m not here to get in the middle of it, and I get out all of that energy, the nervous energy I’m building up, and it has been a game changer for me.

Elaine: I love that.

Diane: The other thing I think about, Andrea, when I reflect on kind of your experience is like how much of the work has been recognizing your own inner voices about her, her and how she’s doing. And, and you talked about perspective shifting, and I’m thinking that that’s part of the, the thing is like what part of this is about me versus about her because she’s the kid with ADHD.

Andrea: Yeah. And, you know, something else you guys talked about that really rang true for me is grieving-  what I had wanted and what I had expected, and respecting that. That, you know, that I wanted a kid that was X, Y, and Z, and I got one who was A, B, and C upside down. And I needed some time to let go of that, of what I wanted, so that I could really make room to celebrate and love what I have. But for me, that was a huge part of this process with Impact Parents, was giving myself permission to grieve what I didn’t have. That was huge. 

Elaine: Yeah. So we need- We want to take a break? Yeah, we need to take a quick break, and we’ll be right back.  Welcome back everybody. We’re, we are having a success story conversation with Andrea, and it’s just delicious. Up until now, what I’ve heard you say, Andrea, is that, um, Sanity School and the group coaching and the support here has been a true north for you throughout, from your kid in high school through to college. Um, I’ve heard you talk about shifting perspectives, really recognizing and accepting the value of taking care of yourself and doing something for yourself. It’s huge. Um, the value of giving yourself permission to grieve the child you thought you’d have so that you can embrace the fabulous child you have. One of the things I’ve noticed in the conversations we have around success stories and, and sometimes how, how hard it is to get members to even be willing to call success, is that no matter how good it is, we all, and I think Diane and I too, we all feel like, “Yeah, but I’m not there yet. I’m… It’s not a success yet, ’cause I haven’t gotten there yet.”

Diane: That’s actually what I said that to her beforehand. I was like, “You know, we’re still a mess on many days.” 

Elaine: Like, we’re all a work in progress because we’re all constantly parenting all the way until the end, right? Yeah. 

Diane: Yeah. 

Elaine: So I just wanna speak a little bit to that notion that you can see all of this amazing improvement and still not have it all together, and that can still be a success. Can we talk about that a little bit? 

Andrea: Absolutely. That is huge, because I kept feeling like, you know, ’cause you’re this parent, you have this spicy kid, and you’re searching for answers everywhere. And you know, the fantasy is I’m gonna search for an answer, I’m gonna find the answer, and I’m gonna fix it, and my kid’s gonna be like everybody else, and we’re gonna be on time, and it’s all gonna be good. And, um, you know, I had to kinda get that pounded out of me too. It’s like, no, you’re not. No, you’re not. You’re gonna find tools that help you along the way, but there’s no, like, walking over the threshold into the rainbows of munchkin land. It, it, you know, it just means that you’re better equipped, sort of like lifting my weights at burn boot camp. I can lift a lot heavier now. I’m so much stronger. You know, but there’s no arrival point. It’s just enjoying this journey. And I’ll compare, my mom had early onset dementia, which was heartbreaking. My daughter was around six when she was diagnosed, and my mom was the only other person besides me that could be the whisperer for my daughter. It, and it was so, it was devastating, cause suddenly I lost my biggest support and I became a support for both sides, which was brutal. 

Elaine: Yeah. 

Andrea: Man, we just learned to roll with it. Part of it was my daughter’s gifts. Because of ADHD, she could think outside the box and behave outside the box a lot better than I could. So I actually looked to her sometimes to figure these creative ways to deal with what my mom was going through. And I will tell y’all, those were some of the best years of my life. Some of the most brutal and difficult, but we would go play music for my mom and sing. My daughter would play, and she and I would both sing with my mom, and that will go down as the best moments of my life, even though they were the hardest.

Elaine: Isn’t that amazing that something can be hard and joyful all at the same time? 

Andrea: Yeah. 

Elaine: Parenting is like that, isn’t it? 

Andrea: It really is. 

Elaine: One of the things you said to us before we started was that, that you also found that you were using these coaching tools with your mom. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Andrea: Absolutely. Again, I know I keep mentioning it, the, but that perspective shift. Because I knew my mom, we didn’t know how much time she would have, but we knew it would be limited. Um, and so I couldn’t waste a lot of time being devastated about will my mom forget me? Will she know my daughter? Will she… It was like, you know what? I need to set all that side in a bucket, and I can mourn it as I can, but I need to focus on enjoying what I have with her. And then the most important thing was that my daughter have a relationship with her grandma for as long as she could. And I will tell you, my daughter and her nana were mega tight, and have my daughter has so many great memories of her, and that’s really what I wanted. I didn’t wanna waste time on things I couldn’t change. There was so much I couldn’t change, but I could work with it. And man, that just made all the difference. Just letting go of the stuff I couldn’t change and working with, and really making something quite beautiful out of what we did have.

Diane: Well, and it feels like there’s, like, two parts of that. One, you were talking about fix-it mode earlier, and it’s like that you know, unraveling from being in fix-it mode and feeling like, “Okay, this has to be fixed. This has to be taken care of.” And then the other piece of it is redefining success, and you just said it so brilliantly. It’s like this sort of, “This is what I really wanted. I want my daughter to have a relationship with her grandmother, and I wanna enjoy the time that we have together.” And what a gift to give to all three of you. 

Andrea: Yeah. It was amazing. And something else I would say about you guys is both when I was having to deal with dementia and dealing with the ADHD and extreme anxiety that my daughter has- Because of my natural propensities, it’s like I’m being asked to do everything with my non-dominant hand. And you guys have helped give me practice in writing with that non-dominant hand. I’m, it’s not gonna ever probably come as naturally as writing with my dominant hand, but dang, I can get pretty good at it if I keep writing. I mean, there’s, I feel proud of myself sometimes when my first instinct with something with my daughter is not, “Oh my God,” or, “We’re gonna be late,” but it’s like, “How can I help her make the best of this that we can?” And so I feel really proud that my years with you guys, I feel like, are starting to replace some of those hardcore Hermione Granger type A instincts with some more, “Oh, I’m curious about this” instincts. I love that. So thank you. 

Elaine: I love that. You know, I, I often say that to members of my community in my, in my, um, in my groups, we’re not… and to clients, we’re not responsible for the first thought. We’re responsible for the second thought. That’s the one we can, you know, work with and redirect and shift. What I love about what you’re saying is that doing the work has actually shifted the first thought. 

Andrea: Yep. 

Elaine: That’s huge.

Andrea: And it didn’t happen overnight. It did not, you know? And that, I’m so glad I hung in there because it’s not gonna happen overnight. It’s just repeated. Um, and Diane also loved the hiking, um, example that you always give. You, you’re climbing up a mountain, but you’re not always going straight up, but you’re still getting up that mountain, and I keep calling on that in my head. That on the days that my daughter and I take two or three steps back, it’s just we’re still hiking. We’re still hiking. Yeah. Still climbing that mountain.  

Elaine: Yeah. So we need to start bringing this conversation to a close. Andrea, I want to kind of give you the bully pulpit. Like, what do you want to say to other parents or professionals listening to this? What do you think they need to hear? 

Andrea: I mean, for me encouragement has been huge. That you guys are always like, “You know what? You’re listening to Sanity School, you’re reading a blog. You’re a good parent because you’re trying. You’re in the game with your kid and you care. And yeah, they might look like a train wreck and you might look like a train wreck when you compare you to all the neurotypical people who are shooting stars all around you, but you’re doing great. You really are.” Um, I think that has meant so much to me, and the parent group has meant so much to me because I’ve seen people who are where I am. You know, I’ll never forget my first parent group, there was a woman whose child had just dropped out and come home from college. That was my hugest fear when my daughter went. “She can’t, she can’t come home. She can’t drop out. That’s not okay.” And I saw somebody surviving that. 

Elaine: Mm-hmm. 

Andrea: And I was like, “You know what? If it happens, I’ll handle it and it will be okay.” 

Elaine: Yeah. And it’s surviving that and it’s moving through it, right? There’s something about, we get this story I think when we first start out and have kids that there’s this timeline, and it’s supposed to be done by this time. And, and our kids function on our, their own timeline.

Andrea: Yeah, yeah. 

Elaine: And they, they all get there, they just may not get there at quite the same rapid pace. 

Andrea: Yeah. And embracing that timeline has been beautiful. ‘Cause I see other parents look at me and my daughter sometimes with wide eyes, that I’m totally chill about the time it’s taking her. We’re doing a different path than other people are doing. But, you know, overall, I would say she’s really thriving. She really… And it’s because I’m not trying to cram my little square peg into a round hole. Yeah. And we’re just saving ourselves that heartache. We’re just going for our own path. So thank y’all for giving me permission to do that.

Elaine: Andrea it’s delicious to talk to you. Thank you for, thank you for the acknowledgement that your presence here brings to, to not just to us, but to this work, um, and to this entire community. There are, you know, hundreds of thousands of parents around the world who have been impacted by the coach approach, and it’s just, it’s a beautiful recognition for you to be here. So thank you for that. 

Andrea: Well, y’all are game changers. I cannot thank you enough. 

Diane: Well, and I want to thank you as well for the work you’re doing because, yes, um, we appreciate the acknowledgement and that we’ve been giving you the guidance and the space, and you’ve been doing the work. And you’ve done an amazing job stepping into the kind of parenting role that you wanted to have and not one that somebody told you you should have. And bonus points, ’cause it’s working. 

Andrea: Yeah. It really is. 

Elaine: Maybe not every single day. Exactly. Or every single moment. 

Andrea: We’re getting ready to hit the middle of the new semester starts. And I’m like, “Get your hiking poles, girls.” 

Elaine: Love it. My friend, thank you for being here. Diane, anything else before we wrap? 

Diane: No. Thank you for being here, Andrea. Thank you for those who are listening. What a great, juicy conversation today. 

Elaine: And as always, to those of you listening, you’re here, you’re listening, right? You’re doing the work. Thank you for what you’re doing for yourself and for your kids. It, as you can hear today, it makes an extraordinary difference. 

Andrea: Yep. Big high five to everybody. 

Elaine: Take care, everybody. 

Andrea: Thanks.