UPDATED** - We had a technical glitch where about ten minutes of the audio cut out Megan's voice. While Michelle does enjoy talking, she wasn't having a one-sided conversation. lol

Welcome back to the Spicy Brain Podcast! In this final part of our deep dive into parenting archetypes from The Essential Guide to Raising Complex Kids by Elaine Taylor-Klaus, Michelle and Megan explore the last three personality patterns — Demanding Dave, Defensive Drew, and Bootstrap Bessie — with their signature blend of heart, honesty, and humor.

If you’ve ever heard phrases like “Life’s not fair” or “You just need to do what’s expected of you,” this episode will hit home. Through personal stories, uncomfortable truths, and the occasional pug pee metaphor, they examine how trauma, shame, and generational patterns can sneak into our parenting, and how we can shift toward curiosity and repair instead.

Favorite line from the episode: “You’re never gonna have a butler.”

00:00 intro and why the high kick has to be low

01:15 welcome to new listeners and a recap of the book

03:30 Demand #1: Demanding Dave and Darlene “Just get the socks on!”

06:45 the San Francisco trip, light bulbs, and the Alcatraz mug

11:00 time blindness, accommodations, and why being early is survival

15:10 Megan’s rescue pug as a metaphor for ADHD parenting

18:30 learning to parent without shame, and with sparkles

22:45 “You’re never gonna have a butler”: when language shapes identity

25:00 how expectations can fail when they ignore invisible disabilities

29:00 Defensive Drew — when parenting becomes performance

33:00 othering, vertical games, and looking for parents who get it

36:00 trauma, defensiveness, and the spinny brain

40:30 how therapy (and therapy avoidance) shows up in family patterns

45:00 Bootstrap Bessie: suck-it-up culture and emotional dismissal

48:30 lack of empathy for ourselves and how to break that cycle

51:15 how “suck it up” becomes a stop sign in conversations

53:00 revisiting all 15 archetypes as ways we shut down connection

58:00 what happens after the awareness, the power of "up until now"

01:00:00 the repair process in parenting and neurodiverse relationships

01:03:00 preview: the four-step strategy for managing triggers

01:04:30 final thoughts on values, time, and why parenting is an 18-year interview

ADHD parenting, parenting archetypes, complex kids, Elaine Taylor-Klaus, neurodivergent families, time blindness, emotional triggers, radical acceptance, self-repair, parenting trauma, invisible disabilities, generational patterns, childhood shame, reparenting, expectations vs reality, neurospicy podcast

If you saw yourself in more than one parenting type, you are absolutely not alone, and awareness is the first step toward change. Next week, we’ll shift from insight to strategy with four powerful steps to manage your triggers and reset the stress cycle. Follow or subscribe to the Spicy Brain Podcast so you don’t miss it, and leave us a review to help other neurospicy folks find us too.

Until then, stay curious, stay joyful, and bring a whole lot of radical acceptance.