Parenting Your ADHD Child - Best Strategies

In addition, create and consistently enforce positive consequences for positive behaviors and negative consequences for negative behaviors, Kapalka says.

Why do you do this to me? Certain accommodations might be necessary for your child because of his or her ADHD. However, you still want to encourage kids to cultivate their abilities. Palladino gives an example of finding this tricky balance: She blogs regularly about body and self-image issues on her own blog, Weightless , and about creativity on her second blog Make a Mess.

Retrieved on December 17, , from https: Find help or get online counseling now. By Margarita Tartakovsky, M. Set limits on your own behavior. Set structure—but make it pressure-free.

Give your kids the chance to make wise choices. Use reasonable consequences for rule-breaking. Advocate for your child when appropriate. Avoid muting a headstrong child. Hot Topics Today 1. Living in a home that provides both love and structure is the best thing for a child or teenager who is learning to manage ADHD.

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Maintain a positive attitude. Your best assets for helping your child meet the challenges of ADHD are your positive attitude and common sense. When you are calm and focused, you are more likely to be able to connect with your child, helping him or her to be calm and focused as well. Keep things in perspective. Most of the time it is not intentional. Hold on to your sense of humor. If you are a perfectionist, you will not only be constantly dissatisfied but also create impossible expectations for your child with ADHD.

Believe in your child. Think about or make a written list of everything that is positive, valuable, and unique about your child.

Trust that your child can learn, change, mature, and succeed. Make thinking about this trust a daily task as you brush your teeth or make your coffee. If you are overtired or have simply run out of patience, you risk losing sight of the structure and support you have so carefully set up for your child with ADHD. Join an organized support group for parents of children with ADHD. These groups offer a forum for giving and receiving advice, and provide a safe place to vent feelings and share experiences.

Helping Your Child or Teen with Attention Deficit Disorder

Friends and family can be wonderful about offering to babysit, but you may feel guilty about leaving your child, or leaving the volunteer with a child with ADHD. Next time, accept their offer and discuss honestly how best to handle your child. Take care of yourself. Eat right , exercise , and find ways to reduce stress , whether it means taking a nightly bath or practicing morning meditation. If you do get sick, acknowledge it and get help.

Children with ADHD are more likely to succeed in completing tasks when the tasks occur in predictable patterns and in predictable places. Your job is to create and sustain structure in your home, so that your child knows what to expect and what they are expected to do.

It is important to set a time and a place for everything to help the child with ADHD understand and meet expectations. Establish simple and predictable rituals for meals, homework, play, and bed.

Have your child lay out clothes for the next morning before going to bed, and make sure whatever he or she needs to take to school is in a special place, ready to grab. Use clocks and timers. Allow enough time for what your child needs to do, such as homework or getting ready in the morning. Use a timer for homework or transitional times, such as between finishing up play and getting ready for bed. Create a quiet place. Make sure your child has a quiet, private space of his or her own.

Do your best to be neat and organized. Set up your home in an organized way. Make sure your child knows that everything has its place. Lead by example with neatness and organization as much as possible.

How to help your child with ADHD

For kids with ADHD, idle time may exacerbate their symptoms and create chaos in your home. It is important to keep a child with ADHD busy without piling on so many things that the child becomes overwhelmed. Sign your child up for a sport, art class, or music.

These can be tasks like helping you cook, playing a board game with a sibling, or drawing a picture. Children with ADHD need consistent rules that they can understand and follow. Make the rules of behavior for the family simple and clear. Write down the rules and hang them up in a place where your child can easily read them. Children with ADHD respond particularly well to organized systems of rewards and consequences. It's important to explain what will happen when the rules are obeyed and when they are broken. Finally, stick to your system: As you establish these consistent structures, keep in mind that children with ADHD often receive criticism.

Be on the lookout for good behavior—and praise it. Praise is especially important for children who have ADHD because they typically get so little of it. These children receive correction, remediation, and complaints about their behavior—but little positive reinforcement. A smile, positive comment, or other reward from you can improve the attention, concentration and impulse control of your child with ADHD.

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Do your best to focus on giving positive praise for appropriate behavior and task completion, while giving as few negative responses as possible to inappropriate behavior or poor task performance. Reward your child for small achievements that you might take for granted in another child. Children with ADHD often have energy to burn. Organized sports and other physical activities can help them get their energy out in healthy ways and focus their attention on specific movements and skills. The benefits of physical activity are endless: Most importantly for children with attention deficits, however, is the fact that exercise leads to better sleep, which in turn can also reduce the symptoms of ADHD.

Find a sport that your child will enjoy and that suits his or her strengths. Individual or team sports like basketball and hockey that require constant motion are better options. Children with ADHD may also benefit from training in martial arts such as tae kwon do or yoga, which enhance mental control as they work out the body.

Insufficient sleep can make anyone less attentive, but it can be highly detrimental for children with ADHD. Kids with ADHD need at least as much sleep as their unaffected peers, but tend not to get what they need. Their attention problems can lead to overstimulation and trouble falling asleep. A consistent, early bedtime is the most helpful strategy to combat this problem, but it may not completely solve it. Create a buffer time to lower down the activity level for an hour or so before bedtime.