When Lauren O’Carroll’s family is running late, all hell breaks loose.
“I have chronic time blindness and tend to rely far too much on urgency to give me the dopamine kick I need to get things done,” she tells HuffPost UK. “So, I suddenly become hyper-productive right before we’re supposed to leave the house.
“My kids, of course, are just kids. They have no concept of time and even less interest in what I consider ‘urgent’. Because they don’t buy into the urgency they dawdle, keep playing, pick a fight (hello dopamine!), or urgently need a specific hairband/lip balm/key chain they’ve lost.”
While all of this is going on, Lauren’s stress levels begin to climb, which she reflects are “triggered by a lifetime of shame around being late”.
“I fall into old patterns from my own childhood, and suddenly I’m speaking like my mother. The kids pick up on my stress, no longer feel safe, and head straight into fight or flight. They shout, I shout, someone cries,” she says.
“Eventually, we soften. I apologise, we repair. And yes, of course, we’re late.”
While a lot of families might experience moments of friction as they try to get out of the door (especially as kids often have zero desire to stop what they’re doing and rush), Lauren and her eldest daughter also have ADHD, while her youngest is awaiting diagnosis, so the moment snowballs.
What follows after is essentially an avalanche of emotion and overstimulation.
ADHD – or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – is characterised by signs of inattention, or hyperactivity-impulsivity, or both, which can interfere with day-to-day life. It’s thought 2.6 million people in the UK have it – 694,000 of which are children.
People with ADHD can experience sensory overload, causing them to experience certain sensations more intensely or longer than normal. According to the Attention Deficit Disorder Association (ADDA), it can lead to overstimulation and a “fight or flight response”, which can impact daily functioning.
The overstimulation likely happens due to “differences in the structure and chemistry of the ADHD brain that change how it processes, receives, and organises stimuli”, notes ADDA.
Lauren, who lives near Cambridge with her family, was first diagnosed with ADHD when she was 21 and studying at university. Her eldest child, now nine, was diagnosed privately at the age of seven, and her youngest, who is currently six, is on a waiting list.
Parenting with ADHD, and having children who are also neurodivergent, is not without its challenges. But at the same time, Lauren notes, she also really understands what her kids are going through.
“On the one hand, I get my kids. Deeply. Instinctively. We share a kind of unspoken language that cuts right through to what’s really going on. There’s this heart-to-heart connection that I don’t often see in neurotypical families. It’s really powerful,” she explains.
“But it’s also hard. We all struggle with emotional regulation. We all feel things deeply. Rejection sensitivity dysphoria [characterised by an extreme emotional sensitivity to rejection or criticism] runs through the whole house.”
As a result the parent says there’s “a lot of shouting, a lot of tears, and a lot of making up”. But she adds that alongside the chaos, “there’s so much joy, excitability, fun, and a love so big it feels almost too much to hold”.
Wajidha is 41 and has recently been diagnosed with ADHD. Her daughter is currently on the waiting list for a diagnosis.
The parent, who lives in London, says she spent most of her life struggling to understand why she felt so different. “Only after receiving my ADHD diagnosis did everything start to make sense,” she says.
“I realised that the struggles I experienced were not a personal failure, but a result of a mismatch between how I process the world and how society expects us to function.”
The clarity of the diagnosis “changed everything” and has also informed how she parents. Wajidha describes how she used to feel frustrated with herself when she couldn’t understand her child’s struggles and behaviour. But now things are different.
“I understand her cues better and what she needs in those situations. For example, I know that any impulsive behaviour is a sign that she is overwhelmed or needs a break,” says Wajidha.
“I’m able to guide and support her in ways that validate her experience and preserve her self-esteem. I want her to feel enough just as she is, not pressured to mask or shrink herself to fit in.”
Some of the strategies she finds helpful include visual cues like timetables, sticking to routines, gentle communication, and having safe spaces to process thoughts.
Wajidha, who is a carer for her husband, also highlights the power of community (Mobilise has been particularly important to her as a parent and carer), as well as joining sports and wellbeing initiatives for her own mental and physical health.
While Lauren and Wajidha received a diagnosis before their children, for Georgina Colman, who is based in Basingstoke, it was the other way around. Her son, 21 at the time, was diagnosed with ADHD in February 2024. She was diagnosed two months later.
“For both of us, overstimulation tends to happen mentally rather than physically,” she says.
“It’s the overthinking that fuels traits like anxiety or OCD-like behaviours. I’ve noticed that when my son is under pressure, such as during exams, he struggles to focus on anything else.
“He’ll forget or ignore other tasks entirely, which I now recognise as a sign of inattentive ADHD. It’s one of the reasons this type is often overlooked in childhood.”
Georgina – who also has multiple sclerosis (MS), and founded Purpl, a discount platform for disabled people – admits that prior to being diagnosed she “used to believe ADHD was down to poor parenting”, which she now knows “is so far from the truth”.
It has been a huge learning journey, particularly discovering how their traits can “clash”.
“I like to get things done straight away, while he tends to leave things to the last minute, which can lead to friction,” she explains.
Advice for other parents on managing being overstimulated at the same time as their child
Navigating overstimulation as a parent, while your child is also overwhelmed, can be difficult. If this resonates, Georgina advises learning the “small cues” that can make a difference in reducing overstimulation – for her son, “a bit of space and some food usually made a big difference”, she notes.
O’Carroll, an ADHD parent coach at Positively Parenting, urges parents to start by figuring out what it is that overstimulates them in these moments. “Is it big emotions? Constant noise? Being touched all the time? Sensory overload? Never having time alone? Or is it the mental load of spinning a million plates?” she asks.
“Getting really clear on the difference between your triggers (often rooted in childhood experiences, like my example of lateness), your stressors (everyday pressure points that build up), and your sources of overstimulation (things that overwhelm your nervous system) is key.”
With clients experiencing this, she said she will often create a ‘self-nurture plan’ that covers off these areas – together, they build a weekly routine that prioritises a parent’s needs, as well as their child’s.
“That plan includes external support, community, accountability, and crucially, a plan for getting back on track when everything inevitably falls apart,” she explains.
“Because let’s be honest… life happens, plans slip, and what matters most is knowing how to begin again without shame.”