Parenting Strategies For ADHD : Part One
One thing I’ve noticed in my work with kids who are diagnosed with ADHD is how easy it is for parent and child to misunderstand each other and feel stuck. Parents who want the best for their child try to teach them responsibility and self-discipline and wonder why strategies that worked for other children aren’t as effective. It can seem like the child with ADHD is being deliberately disobedient, but the reality a lot of the time their behavior is actually due to biological limitations of their brains that produce unique challenges.
Parenting a child with ADHD can be difficult. At times, it can feel like navigating uncharted waters, but with the right strategies and understanding, you can create a supportive environment where your child can thrive.
In this blog post, we'll explore essential strategies tailored for parenting children with ADHD, starting with understanding the condition itself.
Understanding ADHD: What It Means for Your Child
ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects a child's ability to sustain attention, control impulses, and manage energy levels. It's crucial for parents to recognize that ADHD is not simply about being overly energetic or easily distracted; it involves differences in brain structure and function that impact behavior and learning.
ADHD is actually an under stimulation of the part of the brain that can tell you to stop and slow down. Stop, don’t pay attention to that distracting sight or sound. Stop! Don’t say that. Stop, slow down, process your feelings so they’re not as overwhelming in your body. Stop, break down this task into easier steps.
That’s why ADHD is treated with stimulants! It provides the needed stimulation to systems of the brain that aren’t quite working as quickly.
These brain system differences biologically impact your child’s ability to:
Transition from one task to another
Remember what you’ve told them (it’s hard to remember something you weren’t able to sustain attention to to begin with)
Sit still
Regulate difficult emotions
Break down large tasks into more manageable steps
Control impulses
Children with ADHD may struggle with staying focused on tasks, following instructions, and organizing their thoughts and belongings. This can often lead to misunderstandings and frustration, both for the child and those around them. However, with appropriate support and strategies, children with ADHD can learn to harness their strengths and manage their challenges effectively.
Neurotypical Developmental Milestones: Setting Realistic Expectations
ADHD is a developmental condition, which means it’s present in childhood and can change at what points your child meets certain developmental milestones. But this also means we need to be mindful that all children dependent on their age have different capacities to focus and follow directions.
To effectively support a child with ADHD, it's essential to have realistic expectations aligned with their developmental stage. They might not be where their peers are in certain domains, but it’s also important to not compare them to your adult expections (which might be hard for any child to meet).
Here's a brief overview of neurotypical developmental milestones related to attention spans and ability to follow multi-step directions:
Preschool (ages 3-5): Children typically have short attention spans (3-12 minutes) and can follow simple, one-step directions.
Early Elementary (ages 6-8): Attention spans extend to about 10-15 minutes, and children can follow two-step directions with reminders.
Late Elementary (ages 9-11): Attention spans increase (15-20 minutes), and children can follow more complex, multi-step directions independently.
Adolescence (ages 12+): Attention spans become more sustained (20-45 minutes), and children can handle multiple tasks and prioritize activities.
Remember, these are the rough estimates for children who are developing typically. It’s very likely that your child who has ADHD with need specific supports around returning to focus on a task and breaking down complex instructions.
So if you ask your 8 year old to clean their room for an hour, it shouldn’t be surprising if, without help, they end up off task pretty quickly. Or if you child struggles to sit still and take notes for a 45 minute class.
The first step for success is picking tasks that are within their developmental reach. And then, the next step is to provide your child with accommodations so they can begin learning how to do these tasks in a way that makes sense for their brain.
Effective Parenting Strategies for ADHD: Tip #1
In the next few posts we will cover several strategies that may be uniquely helpful for children with ADHD. First, let’s look at ways of helping your child navigate memory.
The problem: You tell your child that they to go upstairs, get dressed, and brush their teeth. When you check in with them a few moments later, you ask, “What are you supposed to be doing right now?” And they shrug.
Or, you tell your child before they go to school that they need to remember to hand in their late homework and bring home the fieldtrip permission slip so you can sign it. As you’re driving them home from school, you find they didn’t remember to do either thing. They might even say, “You never told me that!” Or, they might remember once you’ve told them and feel sad, ashamed, or frustrated that they forgot.
Why it’s happening: There’s several places where this process could be getting stuck for your child.
1. You can’t remember something that you haven’t been able to sustain attention on to begin with. It’s possible that even though your child was looking at you and trying to pay attention to what you were saying, they got distracted inside and didn’t realize they missed half of what you said.
2. They may have remembered what you said initially, but their brain didn’t cue them to remember (because they were distracted by other things or because their cue system wasn’t firing as quickly).
Things you can try:
*Since we know it’s possible they are (100% unintentionally) getting distracted while you’re giving them instructions, one way to check if they got distracted is to ask them to repeat back to you what you said. If they can’t do it, then we know what went down. At this point you might trying breaking down the instructions into smaller pieces and having them repeat it back. Check at the end they can repeat all of what you’re saying.
*It’s possible the list might be too long. Normal working memory (what you can hold in your brain without forgetting) is between 3 and 7 pieces of information, and people with ADHD might have the ability to hold few than that. The good news is we don’t need to be storing things in our brains all the time, instead we can use: a list on paper or notes app on phone, an email or calendar reminder, or a sticky note!
*It might be that they remember what they’re supposed to do, but not WHEN they need to remember it. Now we are talking about memory cues. If this is where the problem lies, we have to help them access cues at the right time. If appropriate, this is where setting an alarm on your phone to go off at just the right time can help. It could be asking a friend who’s likely to remember to prompt you (or even emailing a teacher ahead of time to see if they can help prompt you). If those aren’t options, you can also try making something “not quite right” until the necessary task is completed. What I mean by that is, wearing your watch on the opposite wrist (only if that feels really weird or strange), tying a string to your finger (the old fashioned way!), or handing them a specific item (seashell, marble, quarter, tiny figurine) to carry around until they do what they need to do.
None of this stuff is easy — it all seems simple to solve on paper, but reality is a whole other beast. Remember, you know your own kid better than a stranger writing a blog post on the internet. Some of these strategies might not work at all for your child. Some will. You will have to use what you’ve learned about ADHD combined with your parental intuition to begin to problem solve the unique process that’s going on inside your child and what will help. Hopefully after reading this post you feel like you’ve learned something and have ideas for where to start.