ADHD Parenting Strategies

Which ADHD Parenting Strategies Should I Use With My Child?

Authoritarian or disciplinarian approaches to parenting seldom work on children with ADHD. For those children with ADHD who also express ODD or CD, this is particularly the case. Parents need to learn to adjust their parenting styles, rather than following traditional parenting advice. Typical parenting books and the advice of neighbours will often provide parents advice that is the opposite of effective ADHD parenting strategies. While rules and boundaries are still needed, parents may need to develop a firm but fair attitude that is conducive to change (i.e. flexible) and offers children the potential to revisit events and do them over in a positive manner.

Which Parenting Strategies are Effective?

A potentially effective strategy is to adopt an accepting approach to the child’s behaviours where their tantrums are ignored and mistakes are not dwelled on. Through this strategy, children with ADHD are given lots of love and understanding, with plenty of second chances. Parents will need to actively help their child overcome the issues they face. This can be accomplished by immediately acknowledging negative behaviour, acknowledging that the child’s first response can often be a mistake, and then allowing the child extra time to process what they have done. This strategy helps to ensure that children with ADHD know immediately that their parent will provide them the opportunity to make a situation right. This potentially helps children with ADHD grow their self-awareness and understanding.

Becoming a Scientific Parent

Like all good scientists, a parent can be prepared to research, experiment, test, and revise their ADHD parenting strategies and understandings to see what works best for themselves and their child. Parents are encouraged to read widely from available ADHD literature without relying on a single source or type of source alone (such as social media.)

Be a sceptic: if a claim is not being repeated across multiple different scientific sources, it is probably not true. Collate information from different sources and determine what the commonalities are: what is widely agreed upon? What is widely disagreed with?

Becoming an Executive Parent

Another helpful element for supporting a child with ADHD is for parents to embrace the condition alongside their child. This involves parents being prepared to take charge of this disorder both mentally and physically.

It is one thing to know ADHD in theory, but it is another thing entirely to own ADHD and to accept it for what it is – a part of the child, but not the sum of who they are as a person. This element involves accepting that there are no easy answers or simple solutions to the challenges that ADHD presents. Helping a child with ADHD is inherently a challenging proposition. The sooner parents accept that there will be hardship and frustration along the way, the better prepared they may be when things go wrong.

Children with ADHD may regularly need the active assistance of a parent to help them manage their lives. To do this, parents may need to become proactive and take charge. They can place themselves in a suitable position to advocate for their child at parent-teacher meetings, in public, at the doctor’s, etc. Parents are in the position to know more about their child and what works for them than anyone. They may then use their knowledge to help give insight into the situation. They can also always be willing to ask the questions they need to know the answers to.

Advice For Helping Children With ADHD

• Children with ADHD often experience emotional dysregulation. They tend to be excessive talkers and can be hypersensitive, especially to criticism.
• These children also tend to have a tendency to interpret feedback, even constructive feedback, as criticisms of them. Be careful: as soon as they become emotionally receptive they may be incapable of taking feedback directly. It is often better to give feedback conversationally, so it is set within a different context.
• Children with ADHD do not often have much of a filter. They may frequently speak what first comes to mind. This should not be punished in most cases.
• In the event of a tantrum, an effective strategy can be to ignore, retreat, and then detach. The tantrum will normally dissipate quite quickly. Ease them out of it after they have reached their peak. Engaging can often make tantrums worse.
• Strike a balance with rewards: it can be beneficial to make sure they are not too obvious. However, they need to be given without significant delay. Be subtle: more abstract rewards like iPad or reading time may be very effective, especially if the reward appears to be casually given rather than an obvious reward for good behaviour.

ADHD Parenting Strategies For Children With Both ADHD and ODD / CD

The previously described approach may still be effective and form the backbone of your strategy for a child expressing both ADHD and ODD /CD. Structure, rules, limits, consequences, chores, family meetings and other traditional parenting strategies can still be incorporated with sensible modifications.

Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (CPS) Model

The CPS model suggests challenging behaviour occurs when expectations on a child exceed their capacity to respond adaptively. These behaviours are a child’s signal that they are having difficulty coping. The goal is to foster a collaborative partnership between parents and children to engage children in solving the problems that affect their own lives. In essence, if a parent encourages a child to invest in improving their own behaviour, it becomes more meaningful and effective.

Little Adults

Children with ADHD often see themselves as “little adults” who deserve respect. They can draw energy from adult frustration. Parents may act as a calm role model to help counteract this. Parents should remember that they are the reasonable adult. This improves the chances of a conversation going well. If the child becomes unreasonable or abusive, the parent may choose to point this out and request improvement or reschedule the conversation for later. It can be helpful to be calm, brief, and remember that actions speak louder than words.

Button Pushing

Children with ODD / CD are often very good at pushing people’s buttons. To help counter this, parents may identify what particularly bothers them and be prepared to respond in a way that shows the child did not “get to them” when they inevitably try.

It is important with these children to set out clear rules, expectations and consequences. Some children are keen to exploit ambiguity or inconsistency. Parents can clearly lay out the choices a child can make and their consequences. It can be helpful to ensure the consequences of choices made are enforced the same way each time, especially when care is divided between parents and other caregivers.

Avoid Power Struggles. Parents may choose to clearly lay out their expectations and the consequences of behaviours (positive and negative): “When you do X, then Y will happen as a result.”

Choosing When and Where

Parents should choose when to confront their child. These children will often try to confront their parents when they see them as disadvantaged. This might be in public, when tired, or when the confrontation would potentially embarrass them. It can be beneficial for these parents to note the child’s misbehaviours as something to be dealt with later. They can take action later when they have a cooler head.

Parents should do their best to choose the topic and direction of conversation. They should change topics, ignore the child or display their disinterest if the child tries to steer conversation in a way intended to upset the parent or circumvent rules and expectations.

Establishing Consequences

Parents may try using a mixture of positive and negative consequences. Consider what is meaningful to both the parent and the child. If parents have only a small number of predictable consequences, they tend to lose their effectiveness over time. Constantly using punishments also becomes unpleasant and ineffective. It is typically more effective to reward the child when they do good (positive reinforcement) than to punish the child when they do bad (negative reinforcement.)

Consequences have to work for the parent as well. Where possible, they should avoid sacrificing time and attention to enforce a consequence. They should also avoid extended groundings or total privilege withdrawal. This may potentially embolden a child’s misbehaviour.

Guidance and Small Victories

Children with both ADHD and ODD / CD can sometimes make providing more obvious rewards ineffective. This is because they may have the impulse to reject them outright. In these cases, parents may try allowing these children to have small victories. This lets them occasionally feel as though they are winning or in control. For example: If their bedtime is at 8:00pm but they ask to keep reading, it is okay to give them a little extra flexibility. It is often better not to say no, but to instead be flexible within reason. Try setting a timer for instance.

Remember: It is not necessarily a parent’s job to always keep their child happy. Each child is ultimately responsible for their own mood and behaviour. The parent’s job may be seen as helping to guide their children