Understanding the Bedtime Window It’s 7:45 PM. The evening routine is done. Teeth brushed, lights dimmed, and the elaborate negotiation over how many covers is the correct number of covers has concluded. I’ve said goodnight, and I’ve meant it. Now, I’m mentally calculating how many quiet hours I have left before tomorrow begins. And then it starts. “Mom? Can I ask you something?” It’s never just one thing. It’s never quick. And it’s never — not once in my entire parenting car

Time confetti — the concept that stopped me cold. If you've ever been busy all day and felt like you accomplished nothing, this one's for you. A real talk on managing a neurodiverse household, the invisible load, the science behind why your brain is exhausted, and the imperfect systems that are actually helping.

I am an early person. I do not mean this casually. I mean it as a foundational life principle, the way some people feel strongly about proper hydration or thank-you notes. Being early — truly early, not just on-time early but a few minutes in hand, bags down, breath caught, lay-of-the-land established — is one of the primary ways I give myself peace in a world that does not naturally offer very much of it. Those extra minutes before a phone call, before a meeting, before arri

My daughter is a beautiful ballet dancer. I mean that in the fullest possible sense — she moves through a studio with genuine refinement, with intention, with the kind of body control and grace that years of serious training quietly builds into a person. She is aware of every line, every angle, every position of her limbs in space. She is, by any measure, extraordinarily coordinated. She also walked into a glass door last Tuesday. Full face. Didn't see it coming. And approxi

Let me paint you a picture of a Tuesday afternoon in our house. It could start anywhere — did someone leave the milk on the counter again, who turned off the turntable mid-song, is the music too loud, was the volume already too loud before that — and within approximately ninety seconds, we have a fully escalated, absolutely heated, completely absurd situation on our hands. We are not arguing about anything that matters. We are arguing about milk. We are arguing about it with

Going Granola Without Going Nuts · Neurodiversity · Sensory · 7 min read When someone first said the words "retained primitive reflexes" to me, my brain immediately went to tiny little monkeys doing some kind of ancient ancestral survival dance. Which is not exactly what it means. But honestly? Not entirely wrong in spirit either. Once I understood that primitive reflexes are movements literally built into every human baby for survival, and that most of us graduate out of the

Going Granola Without Going Nuts · Neurodiversity · Sensory · 6 min read You buy the cute new sweatshirt. It is soft on the outside. It seems perfect. You are feeling like a pretty great parent. And then your child puts it on and announces that it is scratchy on the inside and they absolutely cannot wear it. Or the sock. The seam. That specific seam at the toe that is, apparently, completely intolerable and makes the entire morning fall apart. Or the zipper on the sweater tha

One thing I quickly learned on this journey is how limited the resources around dyscalculia still are. Compared to dyslexia, information can be surprisingly hard to find—and often scattered. This is a space I’ll continue to build thoughtfully over time, sharing tools, insights, and supports that have been helpful for our family. For now, here are a few starting points: Full Psychoeducational (Psych/Ed) Taking the step to pursue a comprehensive psych/ED evaluation was one of t

Stimming sits at the intersection of sensory processing and emotional regulation — both of which I've covered in depth. The sensory post: https://www.goinggranola.net/post/sensory-issues-and-adhd-why-the-sock-seam-is-actually-a-really-big-deal. The emotional regulation post: https://www.goinggranola.net/post/emotional-regulation-and-adhd-how-to-help-your-child-name-big-feelings-before-they-take-over. And the calmer home post looks at how to set up your environment to support

Going Granola Without Going Nuts · Neurodiversity · Occupational Therapy · 7 min read I want to start with a confession. When someone first mentioned the words "retained primitive reflexes" to me, my brain immediately conjured an image of tiny little monkeys running around doing some kind of ancient ancestral dance. Like some prehistoric survival routine from a nature documentary. Which is not exactly what it means. But also, not entirely wrong in spirit. Once I understood th

I’m going to be honest. I thought I had a pretty decent handle on ADHD. Not expert level, but enough to feel like, okay, I get what we’re dealing with here. I had the general picture in my head of what ADHD “looked like.” And then I read something that made me stop and go… wait, what? There are not just one or two ways ADHD shows up. There are seven types. Seven! And suddenly I realized I might not have understood this as well as I thought I did. First, What Happened to ADD?

If you're in the earlier stages of figuring out what you're dealing with, the 7 types of ADHD post is a helpful next read: https://www.goinggranola.net/post/wait-there-are-7-types-of-adhd. And if you haven't yet looked into whether a psychoeducational evaluation makes sense for your child, that post is here: https://www.goinggranola.net/post/should-we-get-a-psych-ed-evaluation-asking-for-a-friend. --- IF THIS RESONATED WITH YOU If you're early in this journey — something f