ADHD Parenting: Heal Yourself, Help Your Child with Randy Free of Aspire Coaching

SEND Parenting Podcast

What if your journey to help your child with ADHD actually begins with healing yourself? Randy Free, founder of Aspire Coaching, offers a refreshing perspective that might just transform your family dynamics.
When traditional parenting approaches fail with neurodivergent children, parents often feel trapped in cycles of conflict, meltdowns, and mutual frustration. Randy's personal story of raising two children with ADHD resonates deeply—the hours spent on homework, the struggles within an inflexible education system, and the constant worry about how their story would end. Through this journey, he discovered a profound truth: healing the family system creates space for the child to thrive.
The heart of our conversation explores Randy's PEACE framework (Perspective, Ease tension, Attune, Connect, and Empower), offering a structured path toward calmer, more connected parenting. We unpack how children's emotional outbursts aren't manipulative or defiant but distress signals from a brain where logic becomes inaccessible during emotional moments. Randy introduces practical tools like the STOP method for identifying emotional warning signs and creating personalised calming strategies before reaching full meltdown.
Perhaps most importantly, we challenge the misconception that gentle parenting means permissiveness. Randy articulates the crucial balance between empathetic connection and maintaining clear boundaries, showing how fewer, more focused expectations actually create space for children to thrive. The conversation takes a beautiful turn as we recognize how neurodivergent children flourish when their education aligns with their passions—like Randy's son who struggled to get out of bed for school but achieved perfect attendance at motorcycle mechanics school.
Whether you're in the trenches of daily ADHD challenges or simply seeking to better understand neurodivergent minds, this episode offers compassionate insight alongside practical strategies. Join us to discover how one breath, one conscious choice at a time, you can transform both your parenting approach and your relationship with your wonderfully unique child.

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Chapters

1. Introducing Dr Olivia and Randy Free (00:00:00)

2. Randy's Journey with ADHD Children (00:06:06)

3. The Peaceful Parenting Framework (00:12:05)

4. Understanding Emotional Regulation (00:19:14)

5. Setting Empathetic Boundaries (00:28:37)

6. Creating Home Calm and Final Advice (00:39:31)