Living With ADHD – Parenting

Parenting a child with ADHD often causes one to question their knowledge, skills and abilities as a parent.

Nothing you do seems to work consistently. All the advice that comes from others makes the parent feel inadequate. Parents of children with ADHD often begin to isolate from friends, relatives and their own social activities. It often seems that the ADHD child is running the entire household and all decisions seem to focus on the needs of that one child.

In reality, the problem is not the child. Instead, it is the ADHD and, as parents, we have to separate the behaviors and symptoms from the child. The parents and the child have to begin to learn about the ADHD and develop skills and strategies to lessen the influences of ADHD on their lives and also learn to advocate on behalf of the child and the family. And we haven’t mentioned the effect one child’s ADHD can have on siblings who don’t share the symptoms!

There are a great many skills and strategies that can be learned and applied to the ADHD family. The first step is finding those things that work for your family. Then teach and learn the activity over a period of time. Keep in mind that it takes approximately 21 days to learn and master a new skill so patience and persistence are a major requirement. The primary strategy involves developing specific communications skills and strategies with that child. Making and holding direct eye contact, keeping one’s voice quiet, short, clear, concrete statements and having the child confirm their understanding of the message is critical. A focus on one message at a time is also very important.

Parents have to become very conscious of the differences between discipline and punishment and exercise the discipline approaches more than punishment. Keep in mind that the child is often not misbehaving or using poor behaviors intentionally or willfully! The most impactful behavior from parents is catching the child doing good and supporting, rewarding and congratulating the desired behaviors when they occur.

Missing pet

'She means the world to our family': Woman seeks help in finding missing pet parrot

17h ago

BE CAREFUL ON THE ROADS

Semi flips outside P.A.; one of dozens of incidents on Sask. roads due to winter weather

17h ago

NO GO FOR BUSES

School bus routes outside P.A. canceled due to spring snowstorm

22h ago

Discipline is mainly teaching and helping fix behaviors that are or have gone wrong with an aim of performing better next time. An emotional outburst might result in a “time out” for a few minutes (about the same length of time as the child’s age) in order to calm down and then follow with a quiet unemotional discussion as to what the child may do to prevent a meltdown in a similar situation in the next time. Perhaps even a practice session can be held. Punishment should follow a model of restitution in which the child has to fix or make up for behaviors that have caused harm. Punishment does not teach the child how to fix the behavior, it only teaches the child what happens if you get caught.

An ADHD household needs to have clear expectations of behavior, strong organizational functioning, clearly demonstrated and applied consistent rules and lots of structure.

Sleep is critical for the ADHD child and quiet times and bedtime routines are strictly observed for the benefit of the child and for the rest of the family to recharge their energy. The strengths and potentials are always applied and emphasized. There will a focus on healthy living with regular strenuous exercise, relaxation and meditative time. There will also be a focus on team activities involving the child with ADHD, so household chores are team tasks that have time for chats, hugs, rewards and celebrations built in to the activity.

A quick search online can help you to find many resources and hints to develop parenting skills unique to the needs of an ADHD child.

If you are a person with ADHD or a person who is part of an ADHDer’s life, wanting to improve the efficiency of your interactions, you are invited to the LDAS PA Branch ADHD support group that meets every second Wednesday evening from 7:30 to 9:00 pm at 1106 Central Ave. Please phone the LDAS office to pre-register 306-922-1071. Coaching is available for children and adults. You can also phone the office to arrange a meeting with LDAS staff to develop a one on one coaching plan to meet your individual needs.