The ADHD Journey: The parenting we needed.

By Chellsea Sparks, M.A., LPC Associate

Parenting in today’s day and age can seem overwhelming, considering how scary the world can be right now. There may be an added layer of pressure if your child or children has ADHD. Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is widely misunderstood and stigmatized, especially in children. There is still misinformation about what ADHD is and how it affects the brain. Not to mention there are still a lot of stigmas attached to the label of ADHD, especially when it comes to parenting and child-rearing practices. It is often thought that ADHD comes from bad parenting or that an ADHD child may be willfully defiant. It is important to understand how your child’s ADHD brain works, so you can work with it and not against it. A child who has ADHD isn’t going to be successfully parented by neurotypical approaches because their brain is neurodivergent.

ADHD can be explained as a neurodevelopmental disorder. There are genetic influences and environmental causes. In an ADHD individual, the brain does not produce enough dopamine to aid in executive functioning (prefrontal cortex area) and the development of the brain is delayed in certain areas. Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is a disorder that affects the prefrontal cortex area of the brain even into adulthood. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for processing information, decision-making, and critical thinking. Even without ADHD, individuals do not have full development or capacity of the prefrontal cortex until ages 23-25. In addition to being behind in development of the prefrontal cortex (usually three years behind developmentally for an individual diagnosed with ADHD); there are parts of the brain that are further developed than neurotypical peers. The speech portion of the brain in the ADHD child is more developed than peers. This explains why kids with ADHD are quicker at picking up words and language development. The job of a parent is to be the prefrontal cortex for the child, and the more you know about your child’s condition the better equipped you are to help them. If your child is diagnosed with ADHD, you may be asking yourself what do I do now?

Firstly, I firmly believe that it’s important to understand how you feel about your child’s diagnosis. You may find yourself going through a grief reaction or frustration as to what you can do to help your child. You may also experience doctors who are dismissive or teachers that are not equipped to help your child. ADHD diagnosis for a child can be a scary thing, especially when we think about the stigma label of “Bad Kid” attached to it or “Bad Parenting” beliefs around ADHD. It’s crucial and essential to figure out how you feel and stages of working through those feelings. There are lots of resources out there to help parents with emotions associated with diagnosis and how they can support themselves and their children. It’s important to reframe “ADHD” as something that isn’t negative but rather something that can be a superpower if it is directed and approached appropriately.

Moreover, ADHD isn’t a negative thing. There are plenty of examples of successful people with ADHD that flourished. When exploring how you feel as a parent about your child’s diagnosis; it is essential to understand that a dysregulated parent can’t parent a dysregulated child. If you are experiencing reactions, frustrations, anxiety, or stress due to your child’s diagnosis or symptoms; there are resources out there to help you. You won’t be able to help your kid if you don’t help yourself first. Some tools that you can work on for parenting your ADHD kid is to have consistent structure and clear-cut boundaries. Kids even without ADHD thrive with consistency because they know what to expect when it comes to consequences or rules.

As Brene Brown (2010) says

“setting boundaries and holding people accountable is a lot more work than shaming and blaming. But it’s also much more effective. Shaming and blaming without accountability is toxic to couples, families, organizations, and communities. First, when we shame and blame, it moves the focus from the original behavior in question to our own behavior…Additionally, if we don’t follow through with appropriate consequences, people learn to dismiss our requests—even if they sound like threats or ultimatums. If we ask our kids to keep their clothes off the floor and they know the only consequence of not doing it is a few minutes of yelling, it’s fair for them to believe that it’s not that important to us.

It is hard for us to understand that we can be compassionate and accepting while we hold people accountable for their behaviors. . . We can confront someone about their behavior, fire someone, or fail a student, or discipline a child without berating them or putting them down. The key is to separate people from their behaviors—to address what they’re doing, not who they are” (Brown, p. 27-28).

I believe this quote fully captures this concept of boundaries and structure. You can have logical consequences for bad behavior without shame. You can’t shame someone into change.

Additionally, you must figure out what rules and boundaries make sense for your household and schedule. I would recommend doing this activity as a family on what the expectations are or what each person is responsible for. I highly encourage you to have a visual representation of what the house rules and boundaries are as well as the consequences. The rules must be realistic, consistent, make sense, and be clearly communicated. It’s vital to note here that your ADHD child may struggle to pick this up especially if it is only communicated auditorily.  Children with ADHD may have trouble with processing this information verbally. Hence it is recommended to put this on a whiteboard or somewhere a visual representation of this is placed where it can be referenced back to.

Furthermore, once the rules and boundaries have been set up, it’s important to keep up with them as well as practice being active and not reactive when enforcing them. It is not fair to yell at your child for not completing the task if you are not there to provide structure and positive reinforcement. If you are dysregulated, it becomes near impossible to parent a dysregulated kid. Children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder thrive with reward-based systems and positive reinforcement. Keep in mind every child is different and motivated by different things—whether this is more screen time, activities as a family, affirmations, etc. Your child will be more motivated to complete the tasks if there is a reward-based system in place.

Barkley (2022) talks about the 12 best principles for parents when navigating parenting an ADHD child. I have summarized them below:

1. Focus on the positives of the ADHD child. For example, if the child is good at math or drawing, reinforce those successes and advance the development of these talents or skills.
2. Remember that this is a disorder. There are a lot of stigmas attached to ADHD because you can’t see inside the brain, only the outward behaviors.
3. Be a shepherd, not an engineer. This reinforces the idea that ADHD isn’t something that can be trained out of someone but something that has to be accepted and learned to be coped with. There is no cure for ADHD but there are coping skills that can be learned to help the person have a successful life.
4. Get your priorities straight. The example Barkley gives is that cleaning the house on a school day is not going to help your child’s overall development if the goal is to improve school functioning and performance.
5. Mindful parenting. This is referred to as being there mentally and being aware. Being attentive to them and your own feelings is essential.
6. Promote your child’s self-awareness and accountability. Give feedback that is immediate, frequent, and includes praise. In addition to providing consequences that make sense. This is also to help the child be able to move to self-reporting and accountability.
7. Touch more, reward more, and talk less. This engages your ADHD child in the ways that they need to process the information that you are trying to convey while parenting.
8. Make time real. Use visual cues like a timer that moves and shifts from green, yellow, to red to represent time moving. Since time management may be difficult for the ADHD child to understand.
9. Working memory isn’t working. Individuals with ADHD do not have good working memory. Practice using visual cues and reminders to help the child remember certain things.
10. Get organized. Help your child be organized by being the prefrontal cortex for them. You could get them bins to make clean up easy or structure that is easy to follow to help them build these skills.
11. Make problem solving external and concrete. Children with ADHD can not influence mental information. Parents can work on ways to make it physical or minimize moving parts to help them learn how to problem solve.
12. Be proactive. Be active and not reactive with your child. Plan for difficult situations at home and away in different environments. If you need to verbally review the rules to your child; have them repeat them back to you, so you know they heard them. In addition, you can add rewards to following the rules and the consequences that will happen if they are not followed. Remember to establish the consequences without shaming the child and derailing the self-concept of the child (Barkley 2022 pp. 125-126).

Please remember parenting is already hard enough and you are doing a great job. Your child having ADHD doesn’t mean that you are a bad parent.

Click here to learn more about Chellsea Sparks or call her at 806-680-3695 to scheduled an ADHD assessment.

References:

Barkley, R. A. (2022). Treating ADHD in children and adolescents what every clinician needs to know. GUILFORD.

Brown, B. (2010). The gifts of imperfection. Hazelden.