How You Should Parent Your Kids With ADHD

Tap to Read ➤ Matt Thompson

If you are the parent of an ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) diagnosed child chances are you probably have vented in frustration once or twice. It’s not necessarily your fault nor your child’s. It’s important to understand that child with ADHD requires different handling than other children due to their lack of attention and hyper impulsivity.

Kids with ADHD have trouble focusing and keeping track of their things. They are kind of scattered and can’t seem to complete homework or assigned tasks. They also tend to be pretty impulsive and defiant. They easily get overstimulated and might overreact to their failures and frustrations.

I can empathize with them as I suffered from ADHD symptoms and let me tell you, it’s a pain to deal with. Focusing on tasks is difficult and staying focused is almost torture. Meditation helps but meditation itself requires calming the nerves and aiming the mind. Not easy for an ADHD patient.

So how should you approach to parent your child who has ADHD?

There are ways you can counter some triggers and workarounds which you can incorporate in your parenting. Let me tell you this, ADHD doesn’t handicap your child in any intellectual or physical way other than taking away some of their ability to focus. They tend to be very creative and artistic too.

If you can make your kid interested in a topic, even if they have ADHD they will focus. Make things as interesting as you possibly can and figure out ways to make any subject interesting to your child. They will be able to hyper-focus and with time they will learn to cope with ADHD through their self-consciousness.

Encourage kids on their good deeds. If they are behaving, praise them. Prizing children on their positive ethics only brings out the best in them. They learn what others like and what’s good and bad. This is an integral part of parenting any children.

Try to limit the potentially avoidable distraction through the art of providing structures. When you provide your kid with structural psychological substance, they learn to know what to expect and it calms them down. Through good scheduling and limiting distractions your child learns to adopt responsibilities. Be mindful of what counts as a good time.

Apply this trick to the best of your abilities. Make your children maintain a good sleep schedule. Do not force your children to maintain their sleep time as an ADHD diagnosed kid finds it very difficult to do so. You are the parent so learn to control their sleep time without having to use force.

The trick lies in adding and subtracting to the sleep. If your child goes to bed late for once, make sure you don’t let him/her oversleep too much. Cutting out 1 hour of sleep for that day will make them sleepier throughout the day and when the bedtime approaches, they will tend to sleep easy. Let them sleep for 9 hours or more.

Be careful not to overuse it and letting them undersleep for more than 1 day can be harmful. Sleep is a very important factor for any child. Lack of sleep can prove to be detrimental for them. Be a smart parent and research about everything you are unsure of.

Never just command your children. Explain to them and let them understand the reason. Do not punish your child on behaviors they have no control over due to ADHD. Learn to put a leash on your anger first. Do not overwhelm them and know the difference between discipline and punishment. Punishment should only be used as a last resort.

Seeking professional help is a good consideration. The ADHD doctors can help you and your child through counseling sessions. However, we don’t recommend taking medications. Try to modify your kid’s behavior through positive reinforcement. Resorting to punishment only makes you a bad parent.