PARENTING WITH IMPACT PODCAST
Parenting Neurodivergent Kids: From Information to Real Change (podcast#249)
Trying everything but still feeling stuck with your complex kid? The problem may not be your strategy, but how you are managing yourself. In this episode, we break down why information alone does not create change and what actually helps families move forward. Press play to rethink what support really looks like. Download a free tipsheet, "10 Tips for Calm & Confident Parenting." Use the coach-approach to change the tone in your home or classroom -- starting now! EP249: Parenting Neurodivergent Kids: From Information to Real Change Amazon Music | iHeart | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | TuneIn | Youtube Diane Dempster It is time to talk about what’s ahead this year, right? I was thinking about when we were back in November, when we were at the international conference and people were asking, well, what are you guys doing next? What’s coming up for next year? And we met a lot of new people, and they’re like, we don’t—we’re not even sure kind of what you do offer or what you have. And so, you know, this might be a little bit of a shameless plug, but we’ll build it in for you—like what’s important about it and why it’s important. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Well, so—and here’s what I think is important because when we were at the conference, I mean, a few things happened. One was, um, we really saw how many people we’d impacted—professionals and parents—and that was super cool, because like half the room raised their hands when we asked that question, right? Um, but we—almost every presentation I was in, I heard people talk about the role of managing ourselves to support our kids. Whether it was us as providers or us as parents, everybody was talking about how important it is to kind of put our oxygen masks on first and get ourselves managed and train ourselves and learn and get community. There was so much conversation about community. And so I think that January is such a good time to think about, okay, what does this year look like for me? How do I want to step into navigating my beautiful, fabulous, complex family—or my complex practice—whatever hat you’re wearing. Probably for a lot of you, it’s both. Diane Dempster Yeah, right. Elaine Taylor-Klaus How do I want to do that this year? What does that look like for me now? Diane Dempster Well, and as you’re saying that, one of the things that kind of pops into mind all the time is how caught into information we get, right? And so you’re listening to this in a podcast. You’re probably driving in your car, you’re walking your dog, you’re doing something. Yeah. And I can’t tell you how many parents I talk to who are like—we get stuck in the information, right? It’s this sort of, I’ve got this great idea from this podcast—right? Hopefully ours. You tried it. It didn’t work. So you go back out and you listen to another podcast. You get another great idea. And I think part of what we really do need as humans—and part of what we do a lot, Elaine—is helping you figure out how do I prioritize it? Where do I start? What do I do first? What do I do when it doesn’t work the way that the book or the podcast or whoever it was said that it would? Or why doesn’t it work the way that the book or the podcast or the whatever it was said that it should? And so I want to—this is kind of an invitation—if you guys have been listening to our podcast for a while, to go, okay, what more do I need in my life to support me in moving these ideas forward? And helping myself and my family—or helping myself and my clients, if you happen to be a professional—to move the needle in 2026. How does that sound? Elaine Taylor-Klaus And I love that. And here’s what’s coming up as I hear that. I’ve had a lot of conversations in coaching groups recently. Um, so our groups—our coaching groups—meet every other week, basically twice a month. And they’re divided by ages. So sometimes they’re parents of younger kids, or teens, or young adults, or all ages. And I’ve heard this topic come up a few times in groups where what we were talking about was—what’s the point of the group, right? Like what’s the difference between information and coaching and what we’re doing with our kids? Whether again, parents or professionals—a lot of people are both. And the idea is that part of what we do that I think is very different from what a lot of other programs do is that we actually teach coaching skills that are blended in with neurodiversity. So our training—our program—has a classic coaching model that incorporates neurodiversity awareness into it. We incorporate executive function and trigger management and language processing and motivation—all that good stuff—systems into this model from a neuro-informed lens. Diane Dempster Well, let’s tell people what it’s called while they’re talking about it, so that they can ground in the fact that our training program is called Sanity School, if you didn’t know that. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Already training, but the model is in everything, right? But yeah, so it’s called Sanity School, and yes, love the name because we all need a little sanity. But I think what I’m trying to get to is that when we as adults—so adults are a first line treatment for kids—whatever your role is: teacher, professional, parent. Diane Dempster That sounds really fancy. First line treatment. So the way I say it is if your kid is diagnosed with an executive function challenge, specifically with ADHD, anxiety, right? Elaine Taylor-Klaus It’s a sort of—or autism. Or autism in any way, whether— Diane Dempster Recommended treatment includes training for the parents, and training for the parents is not just go to the internet and learn a whole bunch of stuff about the thing that’s going on, attend five webinars, right? Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yeah, no. It’s a coordinated, organized training that gives you feedback from a professional and a community engagement where you can learn from other parents or adults or teachers. Diane Dempster And that’s why the group coaching piece is so important, because it’s that feedback loop. Go, keep going. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Okay, right. You’re pinning that—come back to that—because what I’m, the point I’m trying to make is that in our world, in the world of Impact Parents, we’re actually training you in coaching techniques and coaching tools and coaching concepts, whatever you come to this with. So if you’re a coach, we might be deepening your learning. Or if you’re an ADHD coach, we might be doing a more broader classic coaching framework. If you’re a teacher or if you’re a counselor, it’s adding to your toolbox, right? We’re building your tool set. And as a parent, we’re giving you a foundational tool set that you can use to begin to shift the dynamic with these kids to communicate more effectively with them. Diane’s hand’s up. What? Diane Dempster So not so you can become your kid’s coach. That’s super clear here. Coaching is a relationship-first, empowerment-based set of communication tools that works so well with neurospicy humans. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yeah. And it’s—and so what we’re teaching you—in the past, in the early years of parent training and teacher training—it was all very solution-focused, right? The researchers did research on—we know reward charts work, y’all, about 40% of the time. So everybody’s doing reward charts. We give adult solutions. And what we learned when we became coaches is that being in the process of problem-solving, a collaborative problem-solving model—which is what this is—is actually more effective with these kids than just coming in with a solution. If we work with them to solve their problems, if we learn how to do that and guide them through it, then we’re really setting them up for independence as adults, which we’re not doing if we just are making sure they get it done. What do you want to add? Diane Dempster You know, I was thinking about the strategies and the solutions, and I was in a small group yesterday and this mom was like, okay, I’m trying to do the exercise in module two with my kid. And I said, okay, so what’s your goal? What’s your context? What’s the problem you’re trying to solve? “I’m trying to do the exercise in module two.” Right? Elaine Taylor-Klaus Right. Diane Dempster I don’t want to put her under the bus, and it happens to all of us. It’s like, I’m trying to get them to use the planner. I’m trying to get them to use a chart. I’m trying to get them to set a timer. Right? It’s this sort of—so we’re focused on this thing. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Timer, by the way—the Time Timer. Diane Dempster Thank you. We’re focused on the solution. It doesn’t mean that the strategies aren’t important and that the Time Timers and the charts and all the other stuff aren’t valuable. But if we don’t go, okay, first—what’s the problem I’m trying to solve and where is my kid with regard to that problem? Do they see that it’s a problem? Is it a problem that’s important to me but not important to them? Is it a problem that they see very differently and they actually like it? This mom had a kid who was going from a really structured environment and left a few activities in middle school. And so now an hour’s worth of homework is taking hours and hours and hours. And part of that is because it’s hours and hours and hours that they have available. And I said, well, does it bother your kid that it’s taking hours and hours and hours to do their homework? “No, but it’s bothering me.” Okay, right? Does that make that right or wrong? But we know that we’re trying to solve a problem that’s important to you and not important to your kid. Long story short, we want to focus on the problems we’re trying to solve and not the solutions and the strategies alone. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Right? The point of a solution, of a tool, of a technique, of a strategy, of a system is to achieve a goal. And part of what we wanna help make sure people do is understand what that underlying goal is and get buy-in and connection so that we’re collaborating with our kids, with our kids to do this. And this is everybody’s applicable, whether you’re an educational consultant, a therapist, a teacher, or a parent, right? The goal is to get our kids to understand themselves well enough to want to learn, to manage themselves, to want to work with you to manage themselves. And I think what we’ve learned is that because coaching is a technique or a modality that’s about empowering people, it really works for these kids. You wanna say something? I can always tell. Diane Dempster Yeah. You can always tell when I wanna say something. What I wanna say is that a lot of times the objection to what you just said, Elaine, is, “Well, my kid doesn’t want to. My kid won’t collaborate. My kid won’t,” right? And so part of what’s in this toolbox is how do I engage my kids? How do I get them interested? How do I find a way to connect with them so that they’ll be interested and available in some way to be able to go, okay, so what I—yeah, if I don’t, I don’t think I really need to do my homework faster. Maybe I do wanna get mom off my back, right? So that might be the “what’s in it for me” as a kid. But it’s about really partnering with the kids and understanding what their agenda is and looking at it from that lens, and not just from what do we need them to do as the adults, what do we need them to do? Elaine Taylor-Klaus So I think what we’ve been talking about up until now is really kind of setting the stage for what’s our role as adults in relation to complex kids, whatever the role, whatever hat you’re wearing. Like we talked at the conference last fall about being multi-hat, multiple hats on, right? So whatever hat you happen to be wearing, what’s the goal? And the goal is really to empower them and foster their ownership and ultimately their independence. So to do that, we support parents and teachers and professionals and educators and therapists in lots of different ways. So let’s take a quick break and then we can talk about what people might do in the coming year to set themselves up for success. Is that good? Diane Dempster Awesome. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Welcome back. We are talking about 2026 that unfolds ahead of us and what you might do to continue to be conscious about how your parenting or supporting complex kids and, frankly, how you might come play with us because we do lots of great stuff and sometimes we do so much stuff that people are a little confused. So we thought we’d make it really simple and break it down for you. And if there is something that’s interesting to you, we invite you to come play with us. And I say play with us because this is serious stuff and we wanna hold it lightly, right? Like the lighter we hold it, the easier it is to navigate these complex issues we’re dealing with. Diane Dempster So before the break, we were talking about the fact that—so let’s put on our parent hat for a minute, right? So if you’re listening and you’re a parent of a complex kid, or if you’re a professional who also has a complex kid, regardless of what age, right? You might have a young adult kid, you might have an elementary-age kid, a teen kid. We’re just gonna put on that parent hat. What you said earlier, Elaine, is we said earlier was recommended treatment includes training for parents. And we said that it’s important that it’s not just information, but it also includes some feedback and some processing, which helps you to take the information and turn it into action. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Right? Diane Dempster That’s the context. Our parent training program is called Sanity School, and we’re really excited because— Elaine Taylor-Klaus We’re doing it live next week. Diane Dempster Next week we’re gonna start doing it. We’re gonna do it live. If you’re listening to this in January 2026, it starts in the middle of January and we’d love to invite you to join us. But Sanity School is often not just an online learning class where you can go and listen at your own pace. And we’re really excited that we’re gonna be teaching it live starting in January. So what do we wanna say about Sanity School? And a lot of it is about change. As I said earlier, it’s about change, right? It’s just that the process of change takes time, and I think that’s where we get stuck because it’s overwhelming. If you sat down and wrote a list of all the things that you’d like to see changed in your family right now, you’d probably come up with a list of at least five things, and probably more like 30 things if you were like me when my kids were living at home. But it’s the how do I prioritize, how do I make it sustainable, and how do I figure out where to start? And so part of what we do is we teach you a process to use. Yes, we teach you a bunch of tools, but it’s really about what process do I use to even figure out where to start, and how do I keep it going, how do I keep moving it forward. And I think there’s an episode we did where we talked about the Impact Model, isn’t there? Elaine Taylor-Klaus We can probably find one. I’m sure there is. And I was just laughing because our joke has always been, “Oh yeah, you gotta use the model,” because it really does help. I just wanna watch our time a little bit. So in the new year, this year, we’re gonna have Sanity School live, which is super exciting and rare. We only do that about once a year, live and virtual. Diane Dempster Yep. Elaine Taylor-Klaus It’s all recorded and all that. Diane Dempster And the step after Sanity School live is to take that in—oh, go ahead. Elaine Taylor-Klaus I just wanna say, when you’re in Sanity School, there are these live calls for the classes, but we also do something called office hours. Members in our community can come to us twice a month and ask questions, get laser coaching, and get feedback so that you’re not just learning it, but we’re really supporting you in integrating it. Diane Dempster Okay, so after Sanity School live—or if you wanna do it on demand, because you can do it on demand too—you don’t have to be with us live, though lots of people love doing it live. We do small groups, and Sanity School Premium includes small group coaching. That’s a way for you to take what you learn in Sanity School and begin to practice it, meaning twice a month with a coach in a small group with parents of kids the same age as yours. That could be parents of elementary-age kids, teens and tweens, or parents of young adults. We actually have three groups specifically for parents of young adults. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yeah, and that’s like ages 18 to 40. Diane Dempster Yeah. Frankly, we’ve got some parents—yeah, right? So that’s the step after Sanity School: how do I take this and put it into practice, working with a small group and a coach over a period of time? Elaine Taylor-Klaus So as you can see, that’s what we think is the magic sauce. The other thing is that while we’re doing all of this, any members in our community always have office hours twice a month, so there’s always access to us. And many times throughout the year we offer workshops or masterclasses. Sometimes it’s us, sometimes it’s other guests, other experts in the community who we think you’d really benefit from learning from. We really encourage people to tune in. One of the things we’re very attentive to is that we don’t just wanna throw information at you. We wanna make sure that when we bring expert information, we bring it in a way that helps you integrate it and implement it using this model. So we’re very conscious of usability so that it’s not just information for information’s sake. What else is happening this year? We always have a spring event. We always have a fall event. We choose the topics based on what’s going on in the world. We’ve added something interesting and new to our newsletter. If you’re not on our newsletter, we strongly encourage you to get on it. It comes out once a week, and we’ve been doing it since 2011. We’ve added a section to the newsletter about news that’s important, to keep you up to date on what’s going on in the world, whether there’s action that needs to be taken or advocacy that needs to be done. You don’t have to engage with it, but for those of you looking for a simple place to get that information, we’re gonna make that available in 2026 because it matters. Diane Dempster And we do masterclasses and workshops all the time in the community. One in particular I wanna highlight, because we were just talking about young adults, is an event we do in the summer called Back On Track. It’s specifically for parents of kids in that older age group, either about to turn 18 or already 18 and older, and it brings in expertise and ideas for how to support that community because it’s very different once kids turn 18 or start living on their own. Elaine Taylor-Klaus I’d say 16 and up. Back On Track is roughly 16 and up, because it’s when they’re really beginning to push back and become more independent. We have to shift the way we parent or support them, and that’s what that event is designed for. Again, I wanna watch our timing. The other thing we’re doing in 2026 that we’re super excited about, especially for professionals listening, is that we’re really gonna dive deeper into our professional training. Everything always starts with the foundational model, learning the model, but we’re reworking our professional certification program into two tiers. There’s training in the model and the coach-approach, and then a specific training for neuro-informed professionals and neuro-informed coaching to really enhance a professional toolkit. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Whatever your work is in the world, we’ve done this in the past. We’ve been doing this for the last four or five years, and we’re really pulling it together into a unified program in 2026. We’re really excited about it. This has been years in the making, and it’s really good. It’s gonna be really, really good. You’re gonna love it. If you’re a professional trying to figure out how to dance with this, or you have a little imposter syndrome—like, I know this professionally, but I’m not sure how to deal with this personally—we really encourage you to check out our certification program. I’m gonna call it a continuing education program because we are training people in neuro-informed coaching skills. It’s not a coach training program, but it is eligible for certification credits for people in the coaching realm. Diane Dempster So it gives you CCUs. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yeah. So it gives you a sense of how robust the training is. It’s a lot of CCUs. Diane Dempster Okay. Elaine Taylor-Klaus The only other thing we wanted to mention—I’m gonna put a plug in for a program called The Adventure Group Parenting: The Adventure Within. This is a special class that Diane teaches, usually about twice a year. It’s a four-week class for parents who wanna do a deeper dive into their own emotional management and preparing—Di, tell me if I got this right. Diane Dempster It’s doing your own inner work. Elaine Taylor-Klaus It’s doing your own inner work. And I’ve never had—and a lot of parents in our community, a lot of parents in our group coaching or in Sanity School will do this program, professionals too—I’ve never had anybody say anything about it that wasn’t fabulous. Just like, “Wow, I didn’t realize,” “Wow, I now understand,” “Wow, this has made such a difference in my relationships.” It really helps people down-regulate their nervous system and show up in a calmer, more present way. Diane Dempster And whether that’s because you’re worrying more than you want to, or you’re overwhelmed, or you’re frustrated—which I think usually falls into one of those three flavors—so much of the energy we put is focused on what’s going on with our kid. Just taking that moment to go, okay, what’s really going on with me and my brain and my body is an important piece of the process. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay, that’s 2026. That’s what’s ahead. As always, we would love to do speaking engagements in your communities, in your schools, school systems, parent organizations, CHADD chapters, live or virtual. One of the things we love more than anything is bringing this coach approach out into the world. That’s my timer—my Time Timer just went off. And if there’s a community you’re part of that you think we could serve, please let us know. We’d love to work with people in whatever way makes sense because that’s how we get this magic out into the world. Diane Dempster And I think that’s what I wanna close with. This is an invitation to venture off the podcast. We’re so glad that you’re a listener and that you’re enjoying the interviews and the messages we’re sharing, and we wanna invite you to come off the podcast, join our community if you’re not already there, or up your game if you’re already in the community. Take some steps for yourself and for your kid. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Whatever role you play in this world of complex kids, conscious engagement makes a huge difference in their lives. They need adults like you, adults like us, who are really paying attention and thinking about how to support them. I heard someone speak at a coaching conference last fall—her name was something like Wella Pavlovich, I’m probably getting it wrong—but she talked about the platinum rule instead of the golden rule. The platinum rule is treating others the way they want to be treated. When we’re learning how to support complex kids, there’s a lot of magic in learning a way of being that supports them in the way they want and need to be treated to set them up for success. I got her name wrong, but we’ll put it correctly in the show notes. Diane Dempster How’s that? It’s the Canary Code. Elaine Taylor-Klaus I’ll put that in there. Okay, y’all, thanks for being here. Take a minute and ask yourself what you’re taking away from this conversation. What’s the one insight you’ve had? What’s one action you wanna commit to? Maybe it’s joining us this year. Maybe it’s signing up for the newsletter. Maybe it’s starring the podcast so it shows up for you every week. Whatever it is, what’s the one action you wanna take to set yourself up for success in being consciously engaged with these amazing, complex kids in a way that works for you and works for them? Diane Dempster And shameless plugs—something to do for us. Wherever you’re listening, please like us, follow us, give a rating to the podcast. We’d love your feedback, and it helps us help you. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Have a great one, everybody. Diane, do we know what we’re talking about next? Diane Dempster I don’t. I’m sorry. See you next time. Elaine Taylor-Klaus All right, everybody. Tune in next week. We’ll have something fascinating. Talk to you soon. Bye. Download a free tipsheet, "10 Tips for Calm & Confident Parenting." Use the coach-approach to change the tone in your home or classroom -- starting now!
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