I sat across from Kirsty and listened as she recounted a story that had been sitting in her brain since it happened.

 

She had been sitting in the airport, waiting to board her plane, when she noticed a young mother with a small boy running up and down the waiting area, becoming progressively more agitated. His mom was chasing him, trying to get him to calm down and board the plane—obviously the last thing he wanted to do. Kirsty watched as the woman grew more and more upset. People were staring. He wasn’t calming down. They were going to miss their flight. It was a worst-case scenario.

 

“It was heart-wrenching to see the pain she was going through,” Kirsty said, “and to see the mistakes I’ve made.”

 

“A lot of my days with Cam would be a battle,” she recounts. The friction would escalate, and eventually, Kirsty would “just flip (her) lid”—a concept from Dr. Dan Siegel that Eloise uses to explain how emotionally reactive situations disrupt communication between the brain’s fight-or-flight response and the frontal cortex, where executive functioning happens.

 

“I learned to walk away,” she says, “and that was huge.”

 

She learned to pause in those high-stress moments and say, ‘Cam, I’m overwhelmed. Please, can we take a break?’ “I needed to do that before I flipped my lid.”

 

Kirsty and her son, Cam, have come a long way from the days when those mistakes were made. Cam’s school originally suggested coaching to help with his executive functioning, but after attending a worskhop offered by Wonderfully Wired at their school, Kirsty couldn’t help but linger afterward.

 

“I wanted to speak with Elle,” she says. “I just had a feeling that I needed her help.” After a couple of sessions, Kirsty was diagnosed with adult ADHD and began coaching with Eloise for her own executive functioning.

“I sit down, and I go through the appointment, and it’s just, sort of, revolutionary, you know.”

 

Often, parents seek help for their children and end up recognizing their own neurodivergence. Deeply ingrained narratives that they are ‘lazy’ or ‘weak’ begin to unravel. By unpacking their own brains and ‘putting on their oxygen mask first,’ parents not only transform their own lives but also support their children in ways they never previously realized.