5 Strategies on Parenting a Child With ADHD
When my daughter was diagnosed with ADHD, I thought my role in her healing was going to be secondary to the school, medical and occupational therapy experts. What I did not expect was that I was actually going to become the leading expert in her diagnosis and in developing the tools and resources that would lead to parenting her differently, and powerfully, as a partner in her healing.
I recently had an eye-opening conversation on my podcast with Lisa Smith, an Occupational Therapist in school settings for over 30 years. Her credentials certainly made her an excellent and credible interviewee on the topic of ADHD: she’s a Certified ADHD Specialist; a Certified Brain Health Practitioner; and is the Founder and Owner of ‘ADHD On Schedule’. But what makes her even more qualified on the topic is her up-close-and-personal experience as a parent with a child who has diagnosed ADHD and a sensory processing disorder.
Lisa didn’t gate-keep any information as she dove straight into discussing the very normal, innocent expectations parents have when their children are recently diagnosed and how that compares to the stark reality of just how much the parents have to actually change in the process of supporting their children.
“We were never told the role we would have to play in this. We also have to learn all of the skills that our children are learning or expect them to learn. Although your child can get all of these great services and supports, the parent is never informed of those strategies to incorporate and use at home. So when the child is in that moment at home [when a challenge is presented to them], because of that executive function delay, they're not going to be able to recall those strategies, and on their own, put them into place. So that is why our role is so important to be that support and to learn all of the strategies that are very ADHD-specific so that when our kids are in those moments, we have some tools in our toolbox to know what to do. We [essentially] have to grow into the challenge of parenting them.”
And boy did she share some valuable tools with me on how to powerfully parent children with ADHD.
Tool #1: Emotional Regulation
We can’t show up as the parent we want to be when we’re in a high state of emotional dysregulation. The front part of our brain that controls all the functions that make logical decisions - if we’re in a state of dysregulation, it shuts off. It goes offline.
So one of the strategies Lisa teaches parents she works with is called ‘Assumed Calm’.
“Assumed Calm means: when you feel anything but calm, you assume the position of calm.” It can be so hard as a parent when you’re responsible for not only regulating your nervous system but also having to help regulate your child’s. As parents, what makes that hard is our emotional attachment. So if we can set aside our emotional attachment - take off our Mom hat and put on our “actress hat” - we can get ourselves into a place of ‘calm’ so that we can actually hear our child, assess their needs, and evaluate which tools we have in our belt to help our child in their struggle.
When I learned that ‘winning’ wasn’t always about moving into ‘fix it mode’ or ‘problem-solving’, but was sometimes about just staying calm, I learned that I could build trust amid mounting frustrations, which allowed us to work through the issue later with much more connection.
Tool #2: Know your strengths and weaknesses…. And your partner’s, too
“I think it's important to not only understand what strengths and weaknesses your child's executive function skills are but to also know yours as well. You may be very strong in an area, for example, organization - and that could be of high importance to you. But your child may be very weak in that area. So now you’re having to navigate ‘how do I parent when I know this is something that is really high on my scale of importance but my child is really struggling with it?’ This becomes a big piece of the puzzle! Then adding to the mix, your spouse’s skills - if there’s a mismatch between the two parents, that can add some stressors to the mix and even to other siblings.”
To be completely transparent, this piece was probably one of the hardest parts of transforming my parenting - realizing we all have a bit of executive dysfunction that was creating a mismatch amongst our family unit and was adding to frustrations with each other. Once we learned what our strengths and weaknesses were through the assessment Lisa provides through her membership program (which is WELL WORTH the money, by the way), it opened up our capacity and capabilities to better understand each other, while working on strengthening our individual weaknesses.
Lisa offers a great free toolkit here.
Tool #3: What are these behaviors, REALLY?
“What are these behaviors? And where are they coming from? Dr. Russell Barkley, the lead researcher in ADHD, has said that ADHD is the most difficult neurodevelopmental disorder for parents to deal with because of the fact that the majority of the ADHD symptoms that we see look like a behavior. They look like our child is not listening. They look like they're out of control. They look selfish. They look ungrateful. They look like they’re rude. They look like they're disrespectful. And in turn, it looks like we are the parents that can't handle them. We're not strict enough, etc. So we really need to be empowered with knowing what to do and how to do it because we do have a child that has an executive function delay and because really - our kids, they don't want to disappoint us.”
This is where parent coaching becomes like gold in your journey.
Tool #4: Parent Training
“Knowing what to do and, and knowing how to do it. I would encourage any parent who feels like you are stuck - get some kind of parent training. Find parent training that is related to your child's symptoms, behaviors, and presentation so that you know what to do and so that you feel confident, competent, and empowered. But remember - even with all the training you can get - it's certainly not going to be perfect.”
Tool #5: Don’t take things personally
“We can sometimes take ADHD behaviors personally. One strategy that I like to share with parents is when your kid is saying something to you that's rude, disrespectful, or hurtful - picture a little speech bubble above their head. If you know what skills they're lacking, put the skill in the speech bubble. You can picture that and then it kind of gives you a little bit more compassion. It gives you that pause to maybe parent a different way.”
“And if you're not sure what skills your child is lacking, then maybe the speech bubble just says - ‘My child is doing the best they can with what they have’”.
