Do you want help teaching your ADHD kids to ask for help? To accept it?

Diane:
One of the common challenges that we're asked about is what to do when our kids have a hard time either asking for help or accepting help. This is the classic sort of, "I got it, Mom."

Elaine:
Or ... if he would just use his planner. I gave him a planner; why won't he use it?

Diane:
Right. Exactly. And as with so many of these, part of this is about really looking at what's going on underneath it. It's not just, "My kid won't take help." There's something that's making it difficult. Maybe it's that the ideas that you've brought, they are having a hard time with. And maybe they don't think that it'll work for them, or they don't know how to do it, or they've tried it, and it's not successful.

Elaine:
Or they're embarrassed 'cause they don't wanna need help, which I think a lot of us as parents deal with, as well. In the sense, it's, "I shouldn't need this. I should be able to do it on my own."

Diane:
Well, and sometimes just the level of stress and overwhelm. And again, a lot of times, when our kids are stressed and overwhelmed, we can't even see it. But a lot of times, their level of stress and overwhelm is so high that their ability to kind of even engage us in asking for help is really low.

Elaine:
So the strategies that we want to offer for that are twofold.

Diane:
The first one is about modeling. It's so hard for some of us to even ask for help for ourselves. We want to encourage you to talk about when you're asking for help, to verbalize it, ask your kids for help. Ask everybody for help, so you're setting the stage for the fact that it's okay and it's perfectly normal to ask for help.

Elaine:
It's human, actually. You gotta ask for help. Everybody asks for help. And then, I often talk about it as "I'm just doing my job, right? Humor me." You know? Asking your kid to indulge you, "Look, you're doing your job, your job's to be a kid, my job's to be a parent and make sure you’ve got stuff going on."

Diane:
"And my job is to help you. And so, let me help you." And a lot of times, that'll shift the energy. Instead of it being about helping them, they're doing you a favor because they're letting you do your job.

Elaine:
"Just humor me, kid" is my approach to helping my kids with ADHD learn to ask for and accept help.

Bottom Line:
Help kids with ADHD ask for and accept help by modeling and asking for help yourself and flipping the situation.