Parenting a child with ADHD can be a real challenge, but understanding the way your child’s mind works and adapting the way you parent can really help. Here are ten ADHD parenting tips to help diminish frustration and achieve more calm in your house.
Understanding your Child with ADHD
If you are raising a child with ADHD you will have noticed that you seem to be working a lot harder and dealing with a lot more frustration than other parents on a day-to-day basis. You are not imagining it! But try to hold on to the thought that your efforts will make a difference for your child as your ‘extra’ parenting helps them find their way onto a positive path to set them up for adolescence and adulthood.
Thinking about ‘why’ rather than having a rigid approach to behaviour and discipline is not about ‘letting them get away with it’ but supporting their development. A child who feels deeply understood will feel that you are on the same side and become more receptive to guidance. There is still a place for consequences for unwanted behaviours but they should not feel shaming or punitive, it’s a learning process and for children with ADHD, meeting behavioural expectations consistently is harder and takes longer.
Children with ADHD are unable to regulate their own internal engine to the same extent as neurotypical children, so they need adults to step in more frequently. We are required to help them with self-regulation both physically and emotionally. We can support them physically by giving regular exercise/movement breaks and meeting their individual sensory needs – this could be using weighted blankets to help their nervous system rest, finding textures they like to touch, or ‘fidget toys’ to occupy their hands when sitting still. We can support emotional regulation by topping up their dopamine levels with positive interactions, helpful redirections, and frequent rewards.
Read more about ADHD in our previous blog ‘I Think my Child has ADHD.’
Your child is likely to be trying to regulate using their environment – this can present as touching everything as they seek the right kind of sensory experience to soothe them or constantly exploring for new stimuli that will top up their dopamine levels. This drive inevitably has a big impact on their behaviour and makes it extra hard for them to meet expectations such as sitting still and paying attention. Particularly if what the adult thinks is the focus of attention is not the most stimulating thing in the child’s environment.
In part this is to do with dopamine, the reward chemical that gives us a sense of interest and motivation, and focus. Children with ADHD sometimes have less dopamine in the brain as it’s not regulated as consistently as others. They will be drawn to the big dopamine hits you get from the exciting things like video games, climbing a tree or taking risks but not putting on socks, brushing their teeth and tidying up. If things in your child’s environment are more interesting than the task they should be doing, they will divert to that. This is not naughtiness, this is the way their brain works. So what can we do to help?
Ten Tips to Support a Child with ADHD
1. We’ve got to learn to use our child’s window of time. We all have a window of attention that we use ‘in the moment’.
Children with ADHD have a narrow window and it’s based on what’s right in front of them. They will be drawn to whatever is around them so creative redirection is essential rather than repetitive, boring demands. If you hear yourself stuck on a loop, try a new tune! It’s hard work but better than a total meltdown.
2. Children with ADHD have a harder time absorbing multi-step instructions.
SIMPLIFY instructions to avoid confusion. One precise task at a time. e.g. ‘Put the dirty clothes on the floor into the laundry basket’, rather than just ‘tidy your room’.
3. Your child is likely to need a lot more correcting and positive feedback ‘in the moment’.
As children with ADHD are easily distracted by their environment, we need to help them regulate and stay on task with positive feedback ‘in the moment’. Keep the dopamine flowing! Once on a downward spiral, it can be really hard for your child to pull back.
4. Build more rewards into their day.
Because their dopamine is not regulated like neurotypical children, your child is not getting the natural sense of reward from ordinary activities. Think of all the boring activities your child finds difficult and find a way to link them to their favourite activities. Get the boring thing done with the fun thing saved for afterward or expect a dopamine crash. So TV time after homework every time.
5. More practice is required to master a routine.
Your child may be very bright but they still need more repetition doing things the same way every day. Whilst they know what to do, they need environmental feedback ‘in the moment’ to achieve it and can easily go off course. It can be hard to make repetitive tasks feel rewarding but we need to be creative. You could collect tokens that they put in a jar for a prize when they reach a certain number or make the activity itself fun for younger children e.g. turning the toothbrush into a character that talks. Making things fun all the time can be exhausting but it’s even more exhausting being in a constant battle.
6. Give them processing time after speaking.
Children with ADHD often need time to gather and clarify their thoughts. It’s a busy place inside that mind! We can give them the gift of patience and silence.
7. Help with planning.
Children with ADHD are living so much in the moment, responding to environmental triggers that they sometimes need us to be the frontal lobe for them, planning and strategizing. You know where they will struggle. For example the last steps to get out of the house. You can set things up like socks right by the shoes by the door.
8. Prep them clearly for a party or an outside occasion.
Reiterate their limits, the positive rewards, and the consequences. Children with ADHD need consequences as much as any other child. If we are calm and fair about them rather than shaming and angry, they will learn something from them.
9. Practice using role-play for very simple things in advance.
For example try role-playing before a visit to Granny’s house to encourage good choices. Choose one thing to focus on. What is the goal of the visit? To spend time with granny. What might be really nice? To say ‘Hi granny’ as soon as you see her! With younger children, you could use toys or puppets to role-play granny and the rest of the family that will make them laugh.
10. Reframe your own experience of parenting your child by focusing on the bigger picture rather than getting mired in the moment.
After a difficult episode, actively bring to mind a recent time when your child was at their sweetest, and don’t let it spoil your whole day. Your love for them is the greatest protective factor and will strengthen them for the rest of their lives.
For more useful tips take a look at Young Minds.
If you are a parent or carer in need of advice on helping your child(ren) with ADHD, our online therapists are here to help with the advice and tools you need. Book an Online Parent Consultation or get in touch with Chloe for more information.
