A recent article from the NAMI Website, Parenting Children Living with ADHD: Tips for Parents, offers ways to deal with some of the challenges kids with ADHD have from experiencing difficulty with peer relationships to not listening or following through with instructions. A summary of the article’s recommendations for supporting children living with ADHD follows.
- Maintain a positive attitude. Focus on your child’s successes and victories in overcoming ADHD and less on the challenges or obstacles of the condition.
- Create and maintain structure. Children living with ADHD are more likely to succeed when they have a regular schedule of tasks each day.
- Communicate rules and expectations. Children living with ADHD do well with clear and simple rules and expectations that they can easily understand and follow. Write down any rules and expectations and post them in a place where your child can easily read them. Explain the consequences when rules are broken and praise your child when they are obeyed.
- Encourage movement and sleep. Children who live with ADHD have energy to burn. Organized sports and other physical activities can help them increase their self-esteem and unleash their energy in healthy and productive ways.
- Focus on social skills. Children living with ADHD often have difficulty with peer relationships and making friends. They may have trouble with reading social cues, talking too much, interrupting frequently or coming off as inappropriately aggressive. Model social skills for your child, hire a life coach or work with your child’s therapist to address this important issue.
- Work with your child’s school. Openly communicate with your child’s teacher and other school personnel about their observations of your child in the classroom and your child’s behavior at home.
