
Parents

Comprehensive Support for Parents Navigating ADHD
Parenting a child with ADHD presents unique challenges that require specialized understanding, practical strategies, and ongoing support. Whether your child was recently diagnosed or you've been managing ADHD-related challenges for years, our parent support services provide the evidence-based guidance and emotional support you need to help your child thrive while maintaining your own wellbeing and family harmony.
Understanding the Complexity of Parenting with ADHD in the Family
Parenting a child with ADHD affects every aspect of family life—from daily routines and homework battles to social relationships and long-term planning. You may find yourself constantly advocating for your child's needs, managing school communications, implementing behavioral strategies, and navigating the emotional ups and downs that come with ADHD's unpredictable nature.
Many parents describe feeling overwhelmed by the intensity and consistency required for effective ADHD parenting. Traditional parenting approaches often prove inadequate for children whose brains process information, regulate emotions, and respond to consequences differently than neurotypical children. This reality can leave you feeling frustrated, exhausted, and uncertain about how to best support your child's development.
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Our individual parent support sessions provide personalized guidance tailored to your family's specific challenges and strengths. We focus on helping you develop effective strategies while also addressing the emotional impact of ADHD parenting on your own wellbeing.
Individual Support Addresses:
Developing ADHD-informed parenting strategies that work for your family
Managing daily routines, homework, and behavioral challenges
Navigating school systems and advocating for your child's needs
Understanding medication decisions and coordinating with healthcare providers
Processing your own emotional responses to your child's ADHD journey
Balancing your child's needs with other family members' needs
Planning for your child's future while managing current challenges
Addressing guilt, worry, and exhaustion related to ADHD parenting
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Our co-parenting support sessions provide specialized guidance for both parents together, recognizing that ADHD and/or other mental health challenges affect the entire family system and that parenting approaches work best when both caregivers are aligned, informed, and mutually supportive. This collaborative approach addresses the unique challenges that arise when two parents are navigating ADHD parenting together, whether they share similar perspectives or bring different viewpoints to their child's care.
Dyadic Parent Support Addresses:
Developing unified ADHD-informed parenting strategies that both parents can implement consistently across different situations and settings
Aligning approaches to daily routines, homework, and behavioral challenges so your child receives consistent support and expectations from both parents
Coordinating school advocacy efforts and ensuring both parents understand their child's educational needs and rights
Making joint decisions about medication and healthcare coordination while ensuring both parents feel informed and comfortable with treatment choices
Processing both parents' emotional responses to your child's ADHD journey, including different grief processes, worry levels, and coping styles
Balancing your child's ADHD needs with other family members' needs while ensuring both parents feel supported in managing complex family dynamics
Creating shared vision and goals for your child's future while addressing any differences in expectations or concerns
Addressing varying levels of guilt, worry, and exhaustion that each parent may experience, and developing mutual support strategies
Managing different parenting styles and finding ways to leverage each parent's strengths while maintaining consistency
Navigating disagreements about ADHD management, discipline approaches, or treatment decisions in productive ways
Supporting each other through challenging periods and developing strategies for tag-teaming during difficult times
Addressing relationship stress that ADHD parenting may create between partners and maintaining connection while managing increased family demands
Planning for crisis situations and ensuring both parents know how to respond effectively to behavioral escalations or school emergencies
This collaborative approach ensures that both parents feel equipped, aligned, and mutually supportive as they navigate the complexities of raising a child with ADHD, strengthening both their parenting partnership and their family's overall resilience.
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Parent Support Groups
Our parent support groups provide connection with other families navigating similar challenges, reducing isolation and offering practical strategies from those with lived experience. Group sessions combine educational components with peer support, creating a comprehensive learning environment.
Group Benefits Include:
Validation and understanding from other ADHD parents
Practical strategy sharing for common challenges
Emotional support during difficult periods
Education about ADHD, child development, and effective interventions
Reduced feelings of isolation and stigma
Cost-effective access to specialized ADHD parenting support
Normalization of both struggles and successes in ADHD families
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Our innovative Accountability-Assisted Therapy program provides additional support for translating therapeutic insights into consistent behavioral change—often the biggest challenge for individuals with ADHD. This evidence-based enhancement works alongside your primary therapy to address executive functioning barriers to progress.
How It Works:
Skills and exercises are assigned by your primary therapist based on your treatment goals
Trained accountability partners provide structured support between therapy sessions
Lower-cost skill practice sessions bridge the gap between weekly therapy and daily life
Regular check-ins help maintain momentum on therapeutic homework and goal implementation
Integration with your primary therapy ensures all support remains aligned with your treatment plan
This program is available as an enhancement to individual, group, couples, or family therapy services and provides the additional scaffolding many ADHD clients need for successful treatment outcomes.
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Parent Consultation for ADHD and/or Anxiety
Our parent consultation services provide specialized guidance for families navigating ADHD, anxiety, or the complex intersection of both conditions in their child's life. These focused sessions offer expert assessment, practical strategies, and professional recommendations tailored to your family's specific situation, whether you're seeking initial direction, second opinions, or support during challenging periods.
Brilla's Unique Approach: The SPACE Framework Integration
At Brilla, we utilize an innovative approach that combines the SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions) framework with our specialized understanding of ADHD and executive functioning. This dual approach recognizes that many children develop anxiety as a secondary response to unmet ADHD needs, and that effective treatment requires carefully calibrated adjustments in two directions:
Decreasing Anxiety Accommodations: Using SPACE principles, we help parents gradually reduce accommodations that inadvertently maintain or increase anxiety while building your child's confidence in managing difficult emotions independently.
Increasing ADHD Accommodations: Simultaneously, we help families implement appropriate supports for executive functioning challenges, ensuring your child receives the neurobiological accommodations they need to succeed without having to compensate through anxiety or compulsive behaviors.
This balanced approach prevents the common cycle where unaddressed ADHD symptoms create overwhelming stress that manifests as anxiety, which then gets accommodated while the underlying executive functioning needs remain unmet.
Comprehensive Consultation Addresses:
Distinguishing between necessary ADHD supports and anxiety accommodations that may be counterproductive to your child's long-term development
Understanding the relationship between unmet executive functioning needs and the development of anxious or compulsive behaviors
Developing targeted intervention strategies that provide appropriate structure for ADHD while building anxiety tolerance and emotional regulation
Educational planning that balances accommodations with skill-building opportunities, ensuring your child receives support without becoming overly dependent
Implementing SPACE techniques to reduce parental behaviors that inadvertently reinforce anxiety while maintaining necessary ADHD supports
Creating clear distinctions between "can't do" (executive functioning limitations) and "won't do" (anxiety avoidance) to guide appropriate responses
Behavioral strategy development that builds executive functioning skills while gradually increasing tolerance for difficult emotions
Family system assessment to identify patterns where anxiety accommodations may be masking or exacerbating underlying ADHD challenges
Crisis planning and intervention that addresses both immediate anxiety management and longer-term executive functioning skill development
Progress monitoring guidance to track improvements in both ADHD symptom management and anxiety reduction
Parent education on executive functioning and how to provide appropriate scaffolding without creating learned helplessness or anxiety dependence
When to Consider Our Specialized Consultation:
Your child seems to use anxiety or worry to avoid tasks that may actually be challenging due to ADHD-related executive functioning difficulties
You're unsure whether to accommodate or challenge certain behaviors in your child
Previous anxiety treatments haven't been effective, and you suspect underlying ADHD may be contributing
Your child has both ADHD and anxiety diagnoses, but interventions seem to conflict with each other
You notice your child becoming more anxious when ADHD supports are reduced, or more ADHD-symptomatic when anxiety is accommodated
Your family feels stuck in patterns of accommodation that aren't helping your child build independence
You want to ensure interventions address root causes rather than just managing surface symptoms
Consultation Format Options:
Single Session Intensive: Comprehensive 90-minute consultation providing immediate assessment of accommodation patterns and targeted recommendations for balancing ADHD supports with anxiety reduction
Short-Term Series: 3-4 focused sessions allowing for gradual implementation of SPACE techniques while building appropriate ADHD accommodations
Ongoing Consultation: Regular monthly or quarterly check-ins to support long-term balance between necessary supports and independence building
Crisis Consultation: Immediate support when anxiety and ADHD symptoms are creating overwhelming family dynamics, with strategic planning for sustainable change
Specialized Expertise in Dual Approach:
Our consultation services are provided by clinicians trained in both SPACE methodology and advanced ADHD intervention strategies. We understand that effective treatment requires nuanced decision-making about when to provide support versus when to build tolerance, ensuring that accommodations serve your child's long-term development rather than inadvertently maintaining problematic patterns.
Ready to Find the Right Balance for Your Family?
Our specialized approach helps families navigate the complex intersection of ADHD and anxiety by providing clear guidance on when to accommodate and when to challenge. This balanced intervention prevents the common cycle where unaddressed ADHD needs fuel anxiety, which then gets accommodated while executive functioning challenges remain unresolved.
Contact us today to schedule your consultation and learn how our integrated approach can help your child thrive.
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Structural Strategic Family Therapy for ADHD Families
When one or more family members have ADHD, it creates ripple effects throughout the entire family system, often leading to rigid patterns, unclear boundaries, and problematic hierarchies that maintain rather than resolve ADHD-related challenges. Our structural strategic family therapy approach focuses on reorganizing family structures and interaction patterns to create healthier functioning that supports both ADHD needs and overall family wellbeing.
Understanding Family Systems and ADHD
ADHD doesn't exist in isolation—it interacts with family structures, roles, and communication patterns in complex ways. Families often develop compensatory structures around ADHD symptoms: parents may become overly involved in managing one child's executive functioning, siblings may take on inappropriate caretaking roles, or family boundaries may become either too rigid or too loose in response to ADHD-related chaos.
Our structural strategic approach identifies these patterns and works to reorganize family structures so that everyone can function optimally while the ADHD family member receives appropriate support without the family system becoming organized entirely around managing symptoms.
Structural Strategic Family Therapy Addresses:
Reorganizing family hierarchies that may have become distorted due to ADHD management needs, ensuring parents maintain appropriate authority while children develop age-appropriate autonomy
Clarifying boundaries and roles when ADHD has created confusion about who is responsible for what, preventing over-functioning and under-functioning patterns
Restructuring communication patterns that have developed around ADHD challenges, moving from reactive responses to proactive, strategic interactions
Addressing triangulation patterns where family members may align inappropriately around ADHD issues, creating dysfunction in other relationships
Rebalancing family attention and resources when ADHD needs have inadvertently created imbalances that affect other family members' wellbeing
Creating strategic interventions to interrupt problematic family patterns while building new, healthier structures around ADHD support
Developing family flexibility to accommodate ADHD needs without becoming rigidly organized around symptom management
Establishing appropriate consequences and supports that work within the family's natural hierarchy and cultural context
Addressing coalition patterns between family members that may maintain problematic dynamics around ADHD management
Building family resilience through structural changes that support both ADHD accommodation and healthy family functioning
Strategic Interventions for ADHD Family Patterns
Our approach utilizes specific strategic techniques designed to shift entrenched family patterns around ADHD:
Enactment and Restructuring: We observe and modify family interactions in real-time, helping families practice new ways of communicating and problem-solving around ADHD challenges while maintaining appropriate family structure.
Boundary Making: We help families establish clear boundaries around ADHD support—when to help, when to step back, and how to maintain individual autonomy within family interdependence.
Reframing and Relabeling: We help families understand ADHD behaviors within a systemic context, reducing blame and pathology while increasing strategic responses that support positive change.
Strategic Tasks and Directives: We assign specific behavioral changes designed to shift family patterns, often working indirectly to create structural changes that support both ADHD management and healthy family functioning.
When Structural Strategic Therapy is Indicated:
Family life has become entirely organized around managing one member's ADHD symptoms
Parents are burnt out from over-managing ADHD while other family members feel neglected
Sibling relationships are strained due to unequal attention or responsibilities related to ADHD
Family members are taking on inappropriate roles (children parenting parents, parents enabling rather than supporting)
Communication has become primarily focused on ADHD problems rather than family connection and growth
Previous individual or traditional family therapy hasn't created lasting structural changes
Family members feel stuck in repetitive patterns around ADHD management that aren't working
There's significant conflict about how to handle ADHD-related challenges within the family
Treatment Process and Timeline
Structural strategic family therapy is typically a shorter-term intervention (12-20 sessions) focused on creating specific structural changes rather than long-term insight development. Sessions are active and directive, with therapists working to create immediate changes in family patterns through strategic interventions and structural modifications.
Phase 1: Assessment and Joining - Understanding current family structure and patterns around ADHD Phase 2: Challenging and Restructuring - Actively working to shift problematic patterns and create new family structures
Phase 3: Consolidation - Reinforcing new patterns and ensuring sustainable structural changesSpecialized Expertise in ADHD Family Systems
Our structural strategic approach is provided by clinicians with advanced training in both family systems therapy and ADHD presentations across the lifespan. We understand how ADHD symptoms interact with family structures and can design strategic interventions that create lasting change while honoring neurobiological differences.
This approach is particularly effective for families who feel stuck in patterns that aren't working, where individual therapy hasn't created sufficient systemic change, or where ADHD management has begun to negatively impact overall family functioning and relationships.
Ready to Transform Your Family Dynamics?
Structural strategic family therapy offers a focused, active approach to reorganizing family patterns around ADHD in ways that support both symptom management and healthy family functioning. This evidence-based method creates sustainable changes that benefit the entire family system.
Contact us today to learn how structural strategic family therapy can help your family develop healthier patterns while supporting your ADHD family member's needs.
CONTACT US
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While our clinical team specializes in ADHD-informed therapy and treatment, we recognize that comprehensive care often requires formal diagnostic evaluation and medication management. We have carefully cultivated a curated network of psychiatrists and psychologists who have been personally vetted by Lauren to ensure their understanding of ADHD and other neurodivergent conditions in women reflects the latest research and clinical best practices.
Our Community Partners Provide:
Up-to-date diagnostic evaluations that recognize the unique ways ADHD presents in women
Comprehensive psychological testing when indicated
Medication management with understanding of hormonal factors and women-specific considerations
Affirming, trauma-informed approaches that honor your lived experience
Clinically sound assessments that avoid common diagnostic pitfalls and biases
When we provide a warm handoff to one of our community partners, you can trust that you'll receive an evaluation or medication consultation that is both clinically excellent and deeply informed about the complexities of neurodivergent presentations in women. This collaborative approach ensures continuity of care and understanding across all aspects of your treatment journey.
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Coordination with Other Providers
Managing ADHD often requires a team approach involving multiple professionals. We help coordinate care between therapists, psychiatrists, educational specialists, and other providers to ensure consistent, comprehensive support for your child and family.
Our Coordination Services:
Communication with your child's treatment team
Integration of therapeutic strategies with other interventions
Support during medication adjustments or treatment changes
Advocacy for your family's needs across different providers
Coordination of treatment goals and progress monitoring
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Parent Support Groups
Our parent support groups provide connection with other families navigating similar challenges, reducing isolation and offering practical strategies from those with lived experience. Group sessions combine educational components with peer support, creating a comprehensive learning environment.
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…how profoundly ADHD can be misunderstood, and how transformative the right support can be.
Early in my career, I worked in San Francisco Unified School District with children who had been labeled as 'behavioral problems.' These kids were constantly in trouble—sent to the principal's office, suspended, seen as defiant or disruptive by their teachers. But in the supportive therapy container I provided, they were brilliant, funny, creative, and deeply caring. The contrast was stark and heartbreaking. These children weren't bad kids—they were misunderstood kids whose neurobiological needs weren't being met in traditional classroom settings.
Around the same time, as I was beginning to specialize in ADHD, I watched a couple in my own family navigate raising their child with ADHD. Being up close and personal to their daily struggles was eye-opening in ways my professional training couldn't capture. I witnessed the exhaustion, the power battles over simple tasks, the sibling dynamics, the isolation from other families who 'didn't get it.' I saw how much they loved their child while feeling completely overwhelmed and often defeated by traditional parenting approaches that simply didn't work.
These experiences—seeing children's potential shine in the right environment and watching a family I care about struggle despite their best efforts—ignited something in me. I realized how desperately we need ADHD-informed approaches that see the whole child, that work with neurobiological differences instead of trying to force conformity, and that support entire families in understanding and thriving together.
That's what drives everything we do at Brilla—helping families move from misunderstanding to clarity, from struggle to strength, and from isolation to connection."
The Hidden Challenges Parents Face
Parenting a child with ADHD often means becoming an expert in areas you never expected to navigate: educational advocacy, medication management, behavioral interventions, and therapeutic support coordination. You may feel like you're constantly "on" in ways that other parents don't experience, managing not only typical parenting responsibilities but also the additional complexity that ADHD brings to every family interaction.
The emotional toll on parents is significant but often overlooked. You may experience chronic stress from managing daily challenges, guilt about your parenting effectiveness, worry about your child's future, and exhaustion from the hypervigilance required to support your child's needs. These feelings are normal responses to the legitimate challenges of ADHD parenting, not reflections of your parenting abilities.
When Parents Also Have ADHD
Many parents discover their own ADHD diagnosis while seeking support for their child—a situation that brings both insight and additional complexity. Managing your own executive functioning challenges while supporting a child with similar struggles creates unique dynamics that require specialized understanding and strategies.
If you have ADHD, you may find yourself dealing with your own emotional dysregulation while trying to help your child manage theirs, struggling with organization while attempting to create structure for your family, or managing your own attention challenges while advocating for your child's educational needs. This isn't a deficit—it's a reality that requires tailored support and strategies that work for your entire family system.
Read More about how we support Adults with ADHD and specifically Women with ADHD.
Building Long-Term Family Resilience
Our parent support services focus not only on managing current challenges but also on building long-term family resilience. We help you develop sustainable strategies that evolve with your child's development while maintaining family wellbeing across the lifespan.
Ready to Get the Support You Deserve?
Parenting a child with ADHD requires specialized knowledge, ongoing support, and recognition that your challenges are real and significant. Our parent support services are designed by clinicians who understand both the clinical aspects of ADHD and the lived experience of raising children with complex needs.
Contact us today to learn how our parent support services can help your family thrive.