Your Child's Nervous System Isn't Content
Why Self-Diagnosed ADHD Motherhood Is Performance Art, Not Parenting
By Dr Moodoom, Psychiatrist & Days Of Our Minds Columnist
The video opens to reveal a mother in her kitchen, one arm outstretched holding the selfie stick, the rest of her body turned to “see” her child mid-tantrum. The child screams—not, one suspects, from dysregulation but from an intuitive awareness that they’ve been enrolled in their mother’s content strategy over an actual playdate. And she won’t stop until she gets the perfect reel.
No need for sound. She’s added captions:
“The most important thing an available mother can do is be there to regulate their children’s dysregulated overstimulated brains”
She’s hoping to beat her previous record for views and new followers. She’s applied the Meta-on trend soundtrack and submitted it for the world to see. She expects new Lululemon merch and face masks for this one. Perhaps a weekend away as well.
Welcome to the age of self-diagnosed ADHD motherhood, where parenting isn’t about guiding a child through the world but narrating one’s own influencer journey through the child.
Step One: The Self-Diagnosis
It starts innocuously enough. A late-night scroll leads to a quiz: “10 Signs You Might Have ADHD.” She ticks most boxes—who wouldn’t? Difficulty focusing during boring tasks, forgetting where you put your keys, struggling with time management when you’ve overcommitted to everything.
Suddenly, her entire identity reorganises around this revelation. Every forgotten birthday card, every impulse purchase, every half-finished project now has a medical explanation. She’s not disorganised—she’s neurodivergent.
The relief is immediate and intoxicating. Years of feeling “not quite right” finally have a name. Never mind that she’s never been clinically assessed, that her struggles might stem from chronic sleep deprivation, unrealistic expectations, or simply being human in an overwhelming world.
The diagnosis is complete before a single professional has been consulted. And why would she need one? The internet has spoken. The other mumfluencers have validated her. She’s found her tribe.
Step Two: Convert the Children
Naturally, she begins noticing the same traits in her offspring. She knows that reactions to food dyes and eating non-organic food that actually contains carbon gets her nowhere on the algorithms.
Little Finn’s meltdown? Emotional dysregulation. Ava’s dislike of homework? Executive dysfunction. The family cat’s 3 a.m. zoomies? Probably dopamine-seeking behaviour.
Of course her children still look stunning and polished in their bespoke clothes—just the right amount of chaos and imperfection so she still rates as an incredible mum, vulnerable and all. Looking youthful and mature simultaneously.
She gleefully applies #ourneurospicyhousehold to everything.
Step Three: Therapeutic Parenting™ [A Masterclass in Performance]
Once upon a time, a parent might have said “No.” Now, the ADHD mother says:
“I see you’re having a big feeling right now. Mummy is going to be present with your nervous system while you throw things.”
She crouches down, breathing audibly through her nose like a mindfulness app on human legs, while her child kicks and screams and throws Barbies at the wall. The phone, still filming, captures every moment of the healing journey. Hopefully the performance won’t need a morning full of takes, and the editing will be done in a jiffy. The distraction that actually led to the child choosing new behaviour—the shiny iPad—is not in shot.
Step Four: Traversing the Child’s Development for ‘Gram Content
Eventually, the child, now seven, refuses to be filmed mid-meltdown. This is reframed as “autonomy.” A new post goes up:
“We’re entering a season of consent and boundary-setting 🌙. I’m so proud of his regulation journey—even when he tells me to stop posting him. I just remind him of how much free shit he gets too, and he gives me what I want.”
What’s Actually Happening Here
As a psychiatrist, I watch this phenomenon with clinical fascination and genuine concern. These mothers aren’t necessarily bad parents. What they often crave isn’t validation of a diagnosis but relief from the chronic self-blame of modern motherhood. ADHD becomes shorthand for “I’m not lazy, I’m overloaded.”
I understand that appeal. In a world that demands perfect parenting, perfect bodies, perfect homes, and perfect content—all simultaneously—a diagnostic label offers absolution. It’s easier to say “I have ADHD” than “I’m drowning in unrealistic expectations.”
The problem emerges when that narrative expands to include the child. When family life becomes therapeutic performance art. When nobody actually gets regulated, least of all the one behind the camera.
What’s really happening? The child is being trained not in emotional regulation but in content strategy. They’re learning that feelings are currency, that vulnerability is performative, and that love comes with a ring light attached.
The Choose Your Own Adventure Model
It really is a “choose your own adventure” scenario for these mumfluencers. Either be the “I do not care” one displaying all the chaos and asking for acceptance or support, or be the perfectly toned, stunning, youthful “my child and I share our diagnosis and wear it as a badge of honour” mum.
Either way, whatever works for you and your bank account.
But let’s be clear about what we’re actually diagnosing here. ADHD is a legitimate neurodevelopmental disorder. It’s not a personality trait acquired through Instagram polls. It’s not an aesthetic. And it’s certainly not a brand.
Real ADHD requires comprehensive clinical assessment—not a quiz that arrives with your morning sponsored skincare routine. It involves standardised rating scales, developmental history, functional impairment across multiple settings, and ideally, input from multiple sources.
What these influencers are doing is taking complex psychiatric presentations and flattening them into content. They’re medicalising normal human struggle, then monetising it.
The Actual Cost
The children in these scenarios will grow up fluent in therapeutic language but potentially illiterate in genuine emotion. They’ll know how to perform regulation but may struggle with actually experiencing it. They’ll understand that feelings generate engagement but might never learn that feelings also deserve privacy, processing, and protection.
And when these children eventually seek actual psychiatric help—because being raised as content often creates its own trauma—they’ll arrive with a vocabulary that sounds clinical but a presentation that’s anything but.
They’ll describe their childhood in hashtags. They’ll reference their mother’s posts as if they were medical records. They’ll struggle to separate their actual experience from the curated version that lives online.
A Modest Proposal
So here’s my professional recommendation, delivered without a ring light or a sponsored hoodie—if you think you have ADHD, see a psychiatrist. Get a proper assessment. If your child is struggling, seek professional help from someone whose primary motivation isn’t follower count.
And if you must post about parenting—and apparently we all must—consider this radical notion … some moments aren’t content. Some struggles aren’t for sharing. Some aspects of your child’s development deserve to remain private, unfilmed, and unmemorable to anyone except the people who were actually there.
Your child’s nervous system isn’t a growth strategy. Their dysregulation isn’t your engagement metric. And their consent shouldn’t come with a reminder about free merchandise.
The internet rewards self-disclosure wrapped in diagnostic labels. But your child deserves better than to be the supporting character in someone else’s mental health journey.
So before you hit record on that next meltdown, ask yourself—am I documenting this to help, to process, to connect? Or am I performing parenthood for an audience that will scroll past in three seconds?
Because one of those serves your child. The other just serves the algorithm.
