Confessions From the Airport Heading Home

Table Talk #012 | By Wendy Gregory | ADHD Family Shift

The Punchline First (You’re Welcome)

An ADHD brain on a routine-free, overstimulating vacation, without its usual medication, is not a brat. It’s a nervous system in free fall. Vacations remove every railing an ADHD child leans on: the routine, the sleep schedule, the predictable anchors, and in our case, the medicine that was forgotten in all that paradise. And gratitude, the thing we most wanted to see? Gratitude is an executive function luxury, and the executive was out of office.

I know all of this. I teach all of this. And I’m writing this from an airport gate, having spent nine days forgetting every bit of it.

First, Meet Iris

When I started this blog, I promised myself I’d be bare and 100 percent honest, even if it meant you’d question me as an expert. My number one goal has always been to be who I needed back when I was desperate for help. And who I needed didn’t sugarcoat.

But before this story, an introduction.

You’ve heard me say “my daughter” a lot around here. She and I had a long talk about that. She’s part of this work; sometimes you’ll see pictures, and she deserved a say in how she shows up in it, along with a name that isn’t her real one. So I asked her what she wanted to be called.

She went through a lot of options and landed on being a flower. Because she likes flowers. That’s it. That’s the whole reason, and honestly, it’s a better reason than most of us have for anything.

So meet Iris. Iris isn’t her real name. She picked it herself; she knows what I write about us, and she’s okay with all of it. Everything you read here passes through her first.

(For the record, she approved this post. Including the part you’re about to read.)

Nine Days in Paradise

Here’s the setup. My best friend rented a gorgeous dream house on an exclusive resort in the most beautiful part of the Bahamas you can imagine. The kind of island, house, and resort my family could never afford for nine days on our own. It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to live somebody else’s vacation with our chosen family, and we were incredibly lucky to be there.

And somewhere around day five, my usually sweet, grateful, funny, fabulous girl disappeared, and a child I barely recognized took her place.

The complaints. The attitude. The eye rolls in paradise. Uncharacteristically ungrateful, argumentative, disrespectful this from the kid whose teachers stop me in carline to tell me how kind she is. We are standing in postcard-blue water, and somehow everything is wrong. I kept looking at this once-in-a-lifetime gift around us, then at my child, and thinking: WHO ARE YOU, and how are you ungrateful right now?

And I have to be honest about my half of it, because that was the promise. I did not handle it well. I snapped. I fussed more than I want to admit. I gave the “I am taking everything away if you don’t change this attitude” speech, which is a speech I coach parents out of giving. Nine days of my ADHD parent coach training and my executive function training, gone like a kite in the island wind.

Now, to be fair to both of us, here’s the detail that explains the whole trip: neither one of us was medicated appropriately. I missed my medicine. Iris took hers less than she didn’t.

Hold that thought. It’s about to matter.

The Airport, the Laptop, and the Blog That Read Me Back

So now I’m sitting in the airport, waiting for the flight home, marinating in guilt about the take-everything-away speeches. I pull out my computer for the first time in nine days to check on the blog I’d published on the way down.

And that’s when I saw it, sitting right there in my own library.

Guide #008. “Why Do I Feel So Guilty Now That I Understand My Child’s ADHD?”

I wrote, and I quote myself: “I punished a capacity problem like it was a character problem.”

Ugggggg.

I sat in that airport chair and got thoroughly coached by a woman who apparently knows exactly what she’s talking about and skipped her own session. Why didn’t I have an Ask Wendy meeting with myself somewhere around day two?

So this post exists for two reasons. One, because you might be sitting in your own airport chair someday. And two, because I need it pinned where I can see it. This one’s for future me.

What Was Actually Happening on That Island

Here’s what I couldn’t see through my frustration.

The short fuse, the irritability, the storm over nothing: that isn’t a side effect of ADHD. Researchers now call emotional dysregulation a core feature of it. Medication is one of the main supports holding it in check, and we removed it.

Then the vacation removed everything else. ADHD kids don’t regulate from the inside; they lean on railings. Routine. Predictable sleep. Knowing what comes next. Paradise took every railing away at once and replaced them with stimulation, sugar, late nights, and constant transitions. What my brain experienced as freedom, her nervous system experienced as free fall.

An unmedicated ADHD brain, in free fall, for nine days.

And the ungratefulness that stung me most? Gratitude is one of the most expensive things a brain can produce. It takes perspective-taking, pausing the complaint on your tongue, comparing this moment to what might have been. All executive function. All offline.

Iris wasn’t reviewing the vacation like an ungrateful critic.

She was drowning in it.

Executive Function Spotlight: Self-Regulation Needs Railings

Self-regulation is the executive function skill of managing your state, your feelings, your impulses, your reactions, and here’s the part parents are rarely told: it is not a solo act. Regulation is a skill PLUS supports. The skill lives in the child. The supports live in the routine, the sleep, the structure, and for many kids, the medication.

Remove the supports and the skill cannot hold the whole load alone, any more than a bridge holds without its pillars. That’s not regression. That’s engineering.

Which means vacation behavior isn’t a preview of your child’s character. It’s a measurement of how much work the supports were quietly doing. Honestly? I came home impressed by our school-year systems.

What Helps ADHD Vacations (and What Quietly Backfires)

What quietly backfires

  • Expecting gratitude from a dysregulated brain. It’s not withholding thanks. It can’t manufacture them yet.
  • The “I’m taking everything away” speech, mid-meltdown, in paradise. It removes leverage and adds zero regulation. (Ask me how I know.)
  • Treating vacation behavior as a reveal of who your child really is, instead of a measure of what the missing structure was doing.
  • Letting every routine dissolve at once because “it’s vacation.” Some routines are the railings.

What actually helps

  • Pack the routine along with the swimsuits: keep two or three anchors sacred (wake window, meals, meds, bedtime-ish).
  • Give the medicine a system instead of a memory: pill case ON TOP of the toiletry bag, phone alarm with a funny name, meds living next to the toothbrushes. Teeth get brushed even in the Bahamas.
  • Build quiet islands into the itinerary: one low-stimulation block every day where nobody has fun on purpose.
  • Grade the trip on connection, not behavior.
  • Repair when you get it wrong. One clean repair, then forward. (Guide #008 has the script. Apparently I wrote it.)

One Shift for Today

The next time you catch yourself neck-deep in parenting guilt, try the meeting I skipped: an Ask Yourself session.

Ask one question: “If a mom I loved told me this exact story, what would I say to her?”

You already know you’d be kind. You already know you’d see the missing railings and the empty pill case and the nine days of free fall, and you’d say “that wasn’t a character problem, that was a capacity problem, for BOTH of you.”

So say it to yourself. Out loud if you have to. In an airport if you have to.

You’re allowed to be on your own caseload.

Questions Parents Actually Ask Me

Why does my ADHD child fall apart on vacation?

Because vacations remove the external structure ADHD brains depend on to regulate: routine, predictable sleep, familiar food times, and knowing what comes next, while adding stimulation, transitions, and late nights. The behavior isn’t ingratitude or regression. It’s a nervous system running without its usual supports.

Why does my ADHD child seem so ungrateful?

Gratitude requires executive function: perspective-taking, pausing the immediate complaint, and comparing this moment to what could have been. When an ADHD brain is dysregulated or overstimulated, those skills go offline, so the complaints come out and the thankfulness can’t. It isn’t a values problem. It’s a wiring-under-load problem.

What happens when ADHD medication days get missed?

For many kids, the symptoms medication was supporting, emotional reactivity, impulsivity, low frustration tolerance, return in full force, and it can be startling if you’ve forgotten what unsupported looks like. Missed doses on a trip are worth mentioning to your child’s prescriber, who can tell you how to handle travel days for your child’s specific medication. That’s their lane, and it’s a short, judgment-free conversation.

How do I keep routines on vacation without ruining the fun?

Don’t keep all of them. Pick two or three anchors that do the most regulating work, usually wake time, meals, medication, and something bedtime-shaped, and protect those while letting everything else flex. Add one predictable quiet block each day. Anchored kids can handle a lot of adventure between the anchors.

Discover Your ADHD Family Pattern

Every ADHD family gets stuck somewhere different. Some are stuck in the reminder cycle. Some fight the homework battle. And some of us are in an airport, getting coached by our own blog.

That’s why I created the ADHD Family Pattern Quiz. In less than two minutes, you’ll discover your family’s unique pattern and receive The ADHD Family SHIFT Method, a practical guide to the five shifts that help families move from chaos to calm(ish), one small step at a time.

Take the ADHD Family Pattern Quiz and find your family’s next shift.

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From My ADHD Family to Yours…

Iris read this post before you did. When she finished, she said, and I quote: “That’s very fair.”

It was both of us. Two unmedicated ADHD brains in free fall over the prettiest water you’ve ever seen, loving each other the whole way down.

The vacation wasn’t ruined. The photos are gorgeous, and the memories are real, brattiness, speeches, and all. Because the trip was never being graded on behavior. It was being graded on connection, and on that scale, we did better than fine.

So here’s to the chosen family who gave us paradise, to the girl who chose her own flower, and to the mom in the airport chair, finally taking her own advice.

Not looking back. Only forward.

Wendy