Beyond Mother’s Day: Building Daily Respect and Connection in ADHD Relationships
From The DadDHD Podcast by Shane Thrapp and Braden Young
May 12, 2026 · 16 min · Season 1 · Episode 14
About this episode
The episode discusses the importance of daily appreciation and connection in ADHD relationships, using Mother's Day as a starting point.
Shane Thrapp and Braden Young use Mother’s Day as a starting point to talk about how ADHD and AuDHD can make dates, gestures, and follow-through difficult, and why appreciation needs to be a daily practice rather than a once-a-year performance. Shane shares involving his kids, Liam and Harley, in choosing gifts to teach them to notice and value their mom, while both hosts emphasize that small, consistent acts of attention matter more than grand gestures. They explain how dopamine-driven novelty, time blindness, object permanence issues, executive function challenges, and rejection sensitive dysphoria can lead to complacency, missed needs, and defensiveness despite good intentions. They recommend systems like scheduled partner check-ins, reminders, trying new things together, learning love languages, externalizing appreciation, and staying present because kids are watching and learning what love looks like in practice.
People in this episode
Hosts: Shane Thrapp, Braden Young
Topics covered
- ADHD
- parenting
- relationships
- appreciation
- daily practice
- executive function
Keywords
- ADHD
- appreciation
- parenting
- relationships
- executive function
- daily practice
- love languages
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