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“He knows what to do, he just won’t do it.” I hear

“He knows what to do, he just won’t do it.” I hear this from parents constantly. Usually said with equal parts frustration and guilt. And I get why it looks that way from the outside. But here’s the reframe that changes everything: ADHD isn’t a knowledge problem. It’s an executive function problem.

Knowing what to do and being able to initiate doing it are two completely different systems in the brain. Your kid can know the steps to get ready for school, know their homework is due, know they need to stop playing, and still not be able to start. That’s not defiance. That’s not laziness. That’s the actual difficulty showing up in real time.

Which is also why nagging harder doesn’t work. You can’t lecture your way into building a brain system that isn’t fully online yet. What actually helps is external scaffolding: structure, visual cues, body-doubling (literally being in the room while they do the task). You’re not doing the task for them, you’re building the bridge their brain doesn’t build on its own yet.

If you’ve been telling yourself your kid is “choosing” not to start, I want you to hear this instead: starting is the hard part. That’s the difficulty. Not the willingness.

Comment NEWS below for our monthly newsletter.

Save this for the next homework battle, or tag a parent who needs the reframe.

Why do we snap at our moms over nothing? 👀 We tak

Why do we snap at our moms over nothing? 👀

We take things out on the people we love the most. So if you’re already anxious about something, and then your mom chimes in with a little unsolicited advice, it’s not surprising if you snap.

Grandparenting expert DeeDee Moore has a simple reframe for moments like this.

When someone gives you advice, the whole response you need is: thank you.

Not “but you’re wrong.” Not a defense of your choices. Just thank you. Saying it doesn’t mean you’re taking the advice. It means the grandparent feels heard, and you both get to move on to something else.

Two words. Way less friction.

DeeDee Moore, founder of More Than Grand, joined me on this episode to talk through exactly these kinds of moments. 🎙️

Link in bio to listen 🎧 Comment GRAND and I’ll send you the link!

Selective attention. It’s one of the first PCIT sk

Selective attention. It’s one of the first PCIT skills I teach parents, and it’s also the one that makes people the most nervous — because “ignore your kid” sounds like bad advice. That’s not what this is.

Here’s the distinction: you’re not ignoring your child. You’re ignoring one specific behavior (whining, minor complaining, the low-stakes stuff that’s annoying but not unsafe).

A lot of that behavior is doing a job. It’s pulling your attention, even if the attention comes with a lecture attached. Negative attention is still attention, and kids will take it if that’s what’s on offer.

So the skill is this: when the behavior starts, you calmly withdraw. No eye contact, no “please stop,” no explaining why it’s annoying. You wait it out. And the moment it stops, even for a second, you turn right back with warmth. Fast. That timing is the whole thing. You’re not punishing the behavior. You’re just refusing to fuel it, and then rewarding the second it shifts.

It sounds simple. It is simple. It is also genuinely hard to do in the moment, especially on day three of a whining streak. That’s normal. This skill gets easier with practice, not willpower.

Comment NEWS to be added to our monthly newsletter.

Save this one for the next whining loop, or tag a parent who needs it.

“Let’s just wait and see.” If you’ve heard that s

“Let’s just wait and see.”

If you’ve heard that sentence about your kid, you’re not alone. And you weren’t overreacting.

A large national study of kids later diagnosed with autism found that parents noticed something early and raised it early. The kids who got answers sooner were the ones whose providers took that concern and ran with it. When the response was reassurance or waiting, the answers came later.

I hear some version of this story about ADHD and learning differences too. Parents almost always knew first.

Here’s how I’d love you to think about an evaluation: The Owner’s Manual. It’s not a verdict on your kid. It’s a map of how their brain works, what’s hard, what’s a strength, and what will actually help. Sometimes it confirms what you suspected. Sometimes it rules things out. Either way, you get to stop spiraling at 11pm.

We don’t have a waitlist at IBH, which is honestly rare right now. If you’ve been sitting on a gut feeling, the free consult is a low-pressure place to start.

How old was your kid when you first had that feeling? I read every one 👇

📚 Zuckerman, K. E., Lindly, O. J., & Sinche, B. K. (2015). Parental concerns, provider response, and timeliness of autism spectrum disorder diagnosis. Journal of Pediatrics, 166(6), 1431–1439.

A test score is a snapshot. It’s not a measure of

A test score is a snapshot. It’s not a measure of your child’s worth, and it’s not a measure of yours as a parent.

That can be hard to untangle, especially when you’re staring at a page of percentiles. But your child can score average on an IQ test and still love math and be really gifted in it. The number is one way of measuring things, and Dr. Monica Corrado says the numbers matter less than how we got there. The process behind the score is where the real information lives.

And when you get the results back, the question to ask is simple: does this feel like your child? Is this the kid who lives with you at home? If the answer is no, that’s worth saying out loud.

Dr. Courtney talks with Dr. Monica Corrado, licensed clinical psychologist, on this week’s Kids These Days episode about gifted testing and what the scores actually tell you.

Link in bio to listen 🎧

“Am I going to throw up?” If you’ve heard that qu

“Am I going to throw up?”

If you’ve heard that question on repeat, especially this time of year, I see you.

A strong fear of vomiting has a name: emetophobia. It’s a specific phobia that often starts in childhood, and it’s one of the most under-recognized anxiety patterns I see. It can look like picky eating, stomachaches before school, avoiding birthday parties, or endless “what if” questions. It’s easy to miss, and people can carry it for years before anyone names it.

I think of it as the Burnt Toast Alarm. Anxiety is supposed to be a smoke detector for real danger. With this fear, it goes off for burnt toast: a gurgle, a smell, a kid across the room who sneezed. And every time we avoid the thing, the alarm gets a little more convinced it was right.

The good news is that this is very treatable. CBT with exposure means small, planned steps toward the scary stuff, at the kid’s pace, and it’s the go-to approach for phobias. In one trial for adults with this exact fear, half of the people who got CBT made meaningful change in 12 sessions.

For this week, just try naming the alarm together. “Is that your Burnt Toast Alarm talking?” You’re not dismissing the feeling. You’re helping your kid see the feeling isn’t the forecast.

What sets off your kid’s alarm? Tell me below 👇

Comment ANXIETY for our free anxiety workbook download.

📚 Riddle-Walker, L., Veale, D., et al. (2016). Cognitive behaviour therapy for specific phobia of vomiting (emetophobia): A pilot randomized controlled trial. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 43, 14–22.

Nobody warns you about the rage. The kind where yo

Nobody warns you about the rage. The kind where your kid spills a cup, or asks you the same question for the fortieth time, and something in you goes from zero to fully activated in half a second. You scare yourself a little. Then the guilt shows up right behind it.

Here’s what I want you to know: that reaction is almost never actually about the cup. Rage like that is often your nervous system reacting to something old. A moment from your own childhood that got wired in as “danger,” long before you were anyone’s mom. Your body doesn’t know the difference between then and now. It just knows the alarm went off before.

This is where EMDR comes in. It’s not about talking through the memory one more time, or trying to logic your way to calm in the moment. It works with how the memory is stored in your body, so the charge underneath it actually shrinks. And the spilled cup goes back to being just a spilled cup.

If this is landing, I want to say clearly: you are not a bad mom. You are an activated one, carrying something that was never fully processed. That’s treatable. That’s not a character flaw.

I have a few consult spots open right now if you’re ready to work on this — link in bio.

Save this for the next time the guilt spiral starts, or send it to a mom who needs to hear it isn’t just her.

Comment NEWS to be added to our monthly newsletter.

They can do really intense math. And you still hav

They can do really intense math. And you still have to wipe their butt.

If that’s your gifted kid, you’re not imagining the whiplash. It’s called asynchronous development, and it’s one of the most common (and most confusing) parts of raising a gifted child. A strength in one area doesn’t mean a strength across the board. Elaborate sentences and an advanced vocabulary don’t mean they’re emotionally at that level, too.

So yes, your kid can be verbally brilliant, can build the tallest Lego tower you’ve ever seen, and can still melt down for an hour when it falls over. Both things are true.

Dr. Courtney and Dr. Monica Corrado, licensed clinical psychologist, break this down on this week’s Kids These Days episode, along with what gifted testing scores actually mean.

Link in bio to listen 🎧
Comment POD and we will send it to you directly!

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