What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew
Working Together to Empower Kids for Success in School and Life
By Sharon Saline
Category: Psychology | Reading Duration: 21 min | Rating: 4.6/5 (107 ratings)
About the Book
What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew (2018) provides parents with insights into the challenges and experiences of children with ADHD. It focuses on the importance of communication and collaboration between parents and children, and outlines the Five Cs that will help you help your child with ADHD. Learn the skills you need to ensure your child flourishes with the brain they have.
Who Should Read This?
- Parents of children with ADHD
- Teens and adults with ADHD
- Teachers and parents
What’s in it for me? Parenting a child with ADHD.
Parenting a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) comes with unique challenges. Children with ADHD often struggle with emotional regulation, organization, focus, and impulse control. This can lead to conflicts around homework, chores, and behavior. The 5 C’s of ADHD parenting offer a collaborative framework for supporting your child in developing vital skills. This text will explore the 5 C’s: self-control, compassion, collaboration, consistency, and celebration. By managing your own reactions, understanding your child’s experience, involving them in solutions, sticking to agreements, and praising efforts, you become their ally, not their adversary. Your child isn’t misbehaving on purpose. Their brain functions differently. With the 5 C’s, you’ll discover how to guide your child in harnessing their unique strengths, while developing the skills they need to thrive. This compassionate approach leads to cooperation and confidence.
Chapter 1: Executive functions
Before delving into the 5 C’s, it’s crucial to grasp what ADHD entails. Although perceived as a recent diagnosis, it has been documented in medical texts for over 200 years, primarily as hyperactivity in young boys. Nowadays, it’s acknowledged that ADHD affects individuals of all ages and genders.Modern medicine recognizes ADHD as a biologically rooted disorder influencing the brain’s executive functions, vital skills for accomplishing tasks and managing emotions and attention. Let’s explore some of these executive functions and their governed actions. Inhibition, the capacity to think before acting or speaking, is a vital executive function. It enables individuals to manage emotions and withstand frustrations or anxiety. Executive functions are also essential for initiating and completing tasks, particularly those involving organization and time management. For children with ADHD, for whom these systems are impaired, this might lead to disorganization and difficulties initiating or completing tasks. ADHD affects your child’s energy and focus regulation, embodying the “attention deficit” aspect of the diagnosis. It might be challenging for them to focus on less chemically stimulating tasks, irrespective of their importance. Another critical function is working memory. ADHD can alter how memories are stored and retrieved, causing the dreaded “in one ear and out the other” effect. The important thing to remember is that your child isn’t engaging in these behaviors on purpose. The 5 C’s of ADHD parenting aim to guide parents in supporting their children in developing skills to work with their unique brains, not against them, in order to become functional and happy adults.
Chapter 2: Self-Control
When Ella, aged 16, arrives home from school, she dumps her bag by the door and goes straight to the kitchen. She’s already on the couch with a snack and her phone when Andrea, her mother, walks in the door. Andrea knows her daughter has homework, but when she asks Ella about it, the teen just snaps. Most of the time, they end up in a heated argument over school and Ella’s work ethic. The homework is always left unfinished. Controlling your emotions in high-stress situations like this is tough. Unfortunately, it’s times like these that are the most important for you to practice Self-Control, the first of our 5 C’s of ADHD parenting. You might have heard that a human’s brain isn’t fully developed until they reach 25, but have you ever thought about what that actually means for your child? Children struggle to regulate and express their emotions at the best of times. Pair that with executive issues from ADHD, and your child is even more prone to outbursts of anger or frustration. Some children with ADHD describe their feelings as a huge wave that breaks over them. Suddenly, they’re just trying to keep their heads above water. You might feel this wave as well, but as an adult, you have the capacity to notice and subdue it before it hits. By learning to manage your own feelings first, you’re teaching your child how to behave and cope with their emotions when things seem overwhelming. The goal is to respond to a situation with purpose, instead of simply reacting to it. The first step is to notice when the wave is coming. Andrea knows that yelling isn’t going to get Ella’s homework done, but she hates being treated like the villain when she’s just trying to help. By recognizing when the frustration is bubbling up, she notices the warning signs. Breathing techniques are an excellent way to cool down when things get heated. One technique you might want to try is Chest Breathing. Place one hand on your chest and take a deep breath. Exhale. Repeat this five times. Make a conscious decision not to react until you’ve finished. By waiting and calming yourself, you’re giving yourself the power to handle the situation instead of escalating it. Blame isn’t helpful, since it just causes your child to become defensive. Neither is jumping to conclusions. For Ella, homework is torture. Since she’s used more energy keeping up at school than most of her peers, she’s exhausted before she even arrives home in the afternoon. She’s ashamed and frustrated. She doesn’t want her friends to think she’s stupid. When Andrea asks her about homework, it just reminds Ella about her failures. She doesn’t want to lash out at her mom, but Andrea would never understand anyway. How could she, since Ella doesn’t understand herself? By responding instead of reacting, Andrea is taking the first step toward a solution that works for both of them.
Chapter 3: Compassion
Rick knows that his son, Kevin, is bright. With the right support and subject choices, he’s a sure shot for the college of his dreams. The only problem is that Kevin absolutely refuses to take an Honors English course. Compassion is the second of the 5 C’s of ADHD parenting. Meeting your child with Compassion means trying to meet your child where they are, not where you think they should be. It’s thinking about their actions in context, rather than making superficial judgements about them being ungrateful or lazy, or just plain not listening to you. When Rick tries to convince his son that Honors English is important, Kevin just gets upset. “You always want me to be perfect. Well, I’m not. I’m nervous about high school. Don’t you get that?” That stings a little. Obviously, Rick doesn’t want his son to be overwhelmed or anxious, but he believes that the boy is capable of great things. He doesn’t want Kevin to give up on himself. Approaching this situation with compassion means that Rick needs to genuinely listen and take Kevin’s perspective into account. Kevin is an anxious kid. When he first started middle school, he could barely sleep, and now, going into high school, he’s even more nervous. He loves math and science, but it takes him a lot more effort to do well in English. He’s worried about not living up to his father’s idea of him. But another Honors subject is important for Kevin’s future, something that Rick knows his son struggles to think about sometimes. What about an Honors Science class? Kevin likes science. At first Kevin is skeptical, but agrees to take Honors Biology. Rick takes his son’s concerns seriously, and by employing a compassionate response, they can find a compromise that suits them both. You can’t solve these problems for your child, but by creating the space for them to talk and feel listened to, you are working to understand the problem as your child sees it. In our earlier example of Andrea and Ella, compassion was also the key to solving Ella’s biggest problem: being exhausted after school. Andrea listened to her daughter’s concerns and remembered that she faced similar issues in high school. She used to wake up early to complete homework before school, when there weren’t many distractions, and she was well rested. Maybe it could work for Ella, too. With compassion and self-control, you tell your child that you’re on their team and ready to help.
Chapter 4: Collaboration
Most children with ADHD receive a barrage of corrective feedback throughout the day. They’re constantly being told that they’re doing something wrong, making a mess, or discovering they’ve lost something important. You can tell them to pick up their socks until you’re blue in the face, but somehow it doesn’t seem to sink in. When you collaborate with your child instead of telling them what to do, you empower them to be part of the solution to their problems. It’s especially powerful to help them be more invested in following through with a plan and ensures that they develop a sense of control over their lives that children or teens with ADHD often lack. Collaboration is our third C of ADHD parenting and involves developing solutions with your child through listening and mutual respect. Let’s say your ten-year-old daughter struggles to get off the computer after her allotted thirty minutes free time on school nights. She’s meant to help set the table while you finish making dinner, but every time you remind her to get off the computer she seems to want just one more minute.Start by having a conversation with your child about what you perceive as the problem. Share your frustrations but keep blame out of the conversation. Remember your self-control and compassion. Now, ask her for her experience of the same problem. Your daughter tells you how hard it is getting off the computer when she’s in the middle of a level of the game she’s playing. When you delve into this a bit, you discover that she has trouble judging the time, as well as switching from one task that is really stimulating to something that really isn’t. You both think that a visual timer, as well as a two-minute warning, might help her with knowing how long she has left. That way, it doesn’t feel like you’re nagging her. Noticing the difficulty in transitioning tasks, you ask how setting the table might be made more fun. She wants to try making it a game or a race. You both agree you’re going to try this for a week, and then check in to see if the new plan has helped. By including your child in the process, you’re setting yourself up as an ally, not an adversary. You’re also teaching them the skills that they will need as they get older and may not always have your support on hand. Sometimes your child won’t be able to communicate the problem, or it’s up to you to interpret what they’re telling you. When your child yells in tears that Mom helps him better in the morning than you do, it might hurt at first, but it also contains valuable information. It’s saying, “There are strategies that Mom uses that you don’t, and things will be easier if you find out what those are.” In the end, understand that your perception of the problem and theirs might be vastly different. The most effective solutions are ones that take both into account.
Chapter 5: Consistency
Once you’ve built a plan together, it’s time to carry it through. The key to developing new habits or behaviors is consistency, both for your child and for you. Consistency is doing what you say you’re going to do as much as you can. If you’ve agreed with your daughter that she can only go out on the weekend if her room is clean, stick to that. If her room isn’t clean, tell her she’s got to clean it before you’ll drive her to her friend’s place. If you are finding it difficult to be consistent in reinforcing behaviors, then you might want to talk to your child and discuss how you could change the plan. Maybe you need to set up phone notifications, or an alarm. It might help to create a physical copy of the plan that you can both consult, and reminders in key spots in the house.It can be hard to teach your child a skill that you struggle with personally. Remember to be compassionate to both your child and yourself. This is a chance to improve the skill alongside your child. It’s also good to remember that setbacks are part of the process. Consistency doesn’t mean perfection, and the plan not working once doesn’t have to be a permanent derailment. When things don’t go according to plan, talk about it with your child. Maybe your 16-year-old has forgotten to take their lunch to school, even though they remembered for a whole week. Maybe your seven-year-old started yelling instead of going to his calm area like he agreed. These moments are not a failure. It’s time to regroup, reset, and start again. Once everything calms down, have a conversation about what happened and give them (or yourself) another chance. Adjust if needed. Don’t throw out the entire plan because of one bad day. Tomorrow you can try again.
Chapter 6: Celebration
Celebrate your child’s successes. These might be big celebrations, like taking them out for dinner when they get a good grade, but the small, day-to-day celebrations are almost more important. Something as simple as acknowledging when they’re following the plan you agreed on can be powerful in reinforcing that behavior. “I noticed you woke up early today to do homework like we talked about. That’s wonderful!” “Thank you for setting the table today. It helps me so much.” Your child is probably more than aware of their faults. Unfortunately, humans tend to remember the negative things they experience over the positive. Make sure they’re aware of their successes as well.The best positive feedback is specific and immediate, and used for both efforts and accomplishments. Too often we only want to give out praise when our child has done something perfectly, but it’s also important to praise the attempt – because this is what builds motivation and habits. Go ahead and say, “You did well on going to bed last night. I only had to give you two reminders.” Although your child’s behavior might not be perfect, let them know that you can see improvements, however slight. Encouraging words can go a long way, like saying, “I know you forgot your lunchbox today, but you’ve remembered every other day this week. You’re doing so well.” When your child makes a mistake, make sure that you let them know that it hasn’t ruined all their hard work. You’re not aiming for perfection; you’re aiming for improvement.Celebrating their successes, however small, helps to build the neural pathways in your child’s working memory, as well as fostering your relationship. It’s a double win.
5 C’s
The 5 C’s of ADHD parenting provide a roadmap to guide your child to success. With self-control, you model emotional regulation. Compassion builds trust and understanding. Collaboration empowers your child to be part of the solution. Consistency helps new behaviors stick. And celebrating successes, both big and small, fosters confidence and motivation. Parenting a child with ADHD brings unique challenges, but also unique joys as you witness their growth. By following the 5 C’s, you become your child’s ally. Your relationship deepens through cooperation, not correction. With time and teamwork, your child will thrive with their unique brain. The 5 C’s help you appreciate their strengths while developing the skills they need to flourish.
About the Author
Dr. Sharon Saline is a clinical psychologist and author who specializes in the treatment of children and adolescents with ADHD. She is the co-founder of the ADHD Wellness Center in New York City, and she has over 25 years of experience working with children and families affected by ADHD. Dr. Saline is the author of several other books on ADHD, including The ADHD Answer Book and The ADHD Parenting Handbook.