Narrator: Twelve-year-old Drew is struggling. He’s repeatedly late to class and forgets to turn in his work. His father, Bill, just wants to help. He takes Drew to the empty middle school one afternoon, hoping to map out a better route to his classes and organize his locker. But when Drew reluctantly opens the locker door, Bill’s good intentions crumble. Inside is a chaotic mess of papers, an old soda can, and a melted candy bar. Bill immediately starts pulling things out, his voice rising with criticism. “How can you find anything in here?” he asks, frustrated. Drew’s face flushes with shame and anger. He yells, “Just leave it alone!” and storms away, leaving his father standing alone in the quiet hallway, confused and wondering where he went wrong.

This painful, all-too-common scene captures the central conflict explored in Dr. Sharon Saline’s book, What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew. It reveals a fundamental disconnect where a parent’s desire to help clashes with a child’s need for understanding, turning a moment of potential connection into one of conflict and shame. The book provides a clear roadmap for parents to navigate these challenges, not by fixing their child, but by fundamentally changing their approach to parenting.

Narrator: At the heart of the daily struggles between parents and their children with ADHD is a profound gap in perspective. Parents see forgotten homework, messy rooms, and emotional outbursts as willful defiance or laziness. Children, however, experience these moments very differently. Nine-year-old Oliver describes the nightly homework battle with his mom: “She just doesn’t understand what it’s like for me. We get my stuff done, but we argue a lot. I want to do it myself, but I can’t, so I’m stuck.” His words capture a deep sense of frustration and helplessness, not defiance.

The book is built on the voices of these children, who consistently express a desire to succeed but feel overwhelmed by their own brains. Seventeen-year-old Amari offers a powerful metaphor for this internal struggle: “Having ADHD is like you’re trying to pedal uphill on a bike, but it’s not in gear so you’re going backward. You’re trying, but it’s just not going.” This constant, exhausting effort without progress often leads to feelings of anger, shame, and insecurity. When parents respond with criticism or punishment, as Bill did with Drew at the locker, it only reinforces the child's negative self-perception. The book argues that until parents can step into their child’s shoes and see the world through their eyes, any attempt at a solution is likely to fail. The first step isn’t correction; it’s connection.

Narrator: To bridge this gap, Dr. Saline introduces a transformative framework called the Five C’s of ADHD Parenting. This model shifts the focus from managing behavior to building a stronger, more collaborative relationship. The five pillars are Self-Control, Compassion, Collaboration, Consistency, and Celebration.

Self-Control is the starting point. It requires parents to manage their own frustration before they can effectively help their child. When eight-year-old Terrell dawdles putting on his shoes, his mother Monica’s repeated reminders escalate into yelling. Later, she reflects that if she had managed her own impatience first, the situation wouldn’t have spiraled. Compassion follows, asking parents to understand the biological reality of their child’s brain and to approach challenges with empathy instead of judgment.

Collaboration means working with the child to find solutions. This is illustrated when Eric, a father and basketball coach, works with his twelve-year-old daughter Sheena, who struggles to remember directions. They create a plan together: he gives calm reminders, and she agrees to ask for help. This turns a point of friction into an opportunity for teamwork. Consistency involves setting clear, predictable routines and following through, which helps children with ADHD learn cause-and-effect and build resilience. Finally, Celebration is about actively noticing and affirming effort and progress, no matter how small. This counteracts the constant negativity many children with ADHD internalize and builds the self-esteem they need to keep trying.

Narrator: A core tenet of the book is that compassion and effective strategies must be grounded in an understanding of the neurobiology of ADHD. It’s not a matter of willpower or a character flaw; it’s a difference in brain structure and function. The book explains that key areas of the brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex—the brain’s “director”—mature more slowly in individuals with ADHD. This region is responsible for executive functions: the complex skills needed to plan, organize, manage time, regulate emotions, and control impulses.

This explains why a child like eleven-year-old Logan finds it nearly impossible to stop playing PlayStation when he’s alone but can transition when his father intervenes. His internal director is still developing, and he needs external support to self-regulate. The book also explains the role of neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine, which are less available in ADHD brains, affecting motivation and focus. Understanding this biological basis helps parents shift from blame to empathy. It reframes the child’s behavior not as a choice to be difficult, but as a genuine struggle with brain-based challenges. This knowledge empowers parents to stop asking "Why won't you?" and start asking "How can I help you?"

Narrator: True collaboration means being open to solutions that might seem unconventional to the parent but make perfect sense to the child. The story of seventeen-year-old Celeste and her mother, Sylvia, perfectly illustrates this. Celeste’s room was a constant battleground. Her clothes were always on the floor because, as she explained, if they were in drawers, she couldn’t see them and would forget what she had. Her solution? Put her clothes on bookshelves.

For six months, Sylvia resisted. To her, clothes belonged in drawers, and Celeste just needed to be neater. The conflict was endless. Finally, exhausted, Sylvia gave in. They bought bookshelves, and the system worked. Celeste’s clothes stayed folded and off the floor because she could see them. Sylvia had to override her own preference and accept her daughter’s unique organizational logic. Similarly, Ayesha, a fourteen-year-old, describes her room as a “sophisticated mess” where she knows where everything is. Her truce with her mother, involving a sticky-note reminder system, honors both her mother’s need for some order and her own need for control over her space. These stories show that effective solutions often arise when parents are willing to listen to their child's reasoning and collaborate on a system that works for their brain, not just the parent's idea of what "should" work.

Narrator: Two of the biggest modern challenges for families with ADHD are establishing consistent home routines and managing technology. The book stresses that both require a collaborative, structured approach rather than a punitive one. The chaotic morning of ten-year-old Greg, who dawdles and gets distracted, shows how a lack of routine leads to constant conflict with his grandmother. The solution proposed is a co-created checklist with built-in incentives, giving Greg a clear, predictable path to follow and reducing the need for nagging.

When it comes to technology, the book argues that parents must first model healthy habits themselves. A powerful story comes from thirteen-year-old J.J., who feels ignored when his father answers his questions while still staring at his computer, yet J.J. gets in trouble for doing the same thing. To manage screen time, Dr. Saline recommends an "Easy On/Easy Off" system. This involves setting a non-negotiable baseline of screen time and offering bonus time as a reward for cooperation, such as getting off a device without arguing. By involving the child in creating these rules and incentives, parents foster buy-in and teach self-regulation, turning a common source of conflict into a lesson in responsibility.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew is that connection must always precede correction. The instinct to fix a problem—the messy locker, the forgotten homework, the emotional outburst—often leads parents to inadvertently shame their child, deepening the rift between them. Dr. Saline’s work powerfully argues that by leading with the Five C’s, parents can build a foundation of trust and understanding that makes genuine, lasting change possible.

The book challenges parents to look beyond the frustrating behaviors and see the struggling child within—a child who, like Amari on her bike, is pedaling as hard as they can. It asks you to consider: what if the next time you feel your frustration rising, you pause, take a breath, and instead of asking "Why did you do that?" you ask, "What was that like for you?" That simple shift in perspective might just be the key that unlocks a more peaceful and connected relationship with your child.