Guiding parents and teachers to navigate the challenges of ADHD
ADHD is a medical condition marked by developmental delays in children and teens, and often leads to challenges in parenting. It tends to be greatly misunderstood by medical and therapeutic providers, who may develop treatment plans that rely on medication as a sole source of treatment to the exclusion of behavior management training in parenting. Parenting interventions are effective, recommended, and have been proven to improve symptoms for children and teens. Most experts agree that ADHD is much (cont'd below)
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Leading Articles about Managing ADHD
5 Tips to Make Life Easier for Yourself as an ADHD Parent
Parenting Can’t Be Automatized Some tasks, like driving, become automatic when we master them. When you’re 16, every turn of…
CONTINUEDPlanning Summer Days: Rhythm and Routine with Kids
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CONTINUEDCalm the Chaos: The Benefits of Practicing Mindfulness with ADHD
Feel like you’re always running on an empty tank because you have to live in the past, present, and future…
CONTINUEDTake Care of Your Brain, Take Care of YOU
You love your child unconditionally and will do anything for them. That 24/7 job is hard enough, but with something…
CONTINUEDGetting Active is More than Just an ADHD Issue
Let’s hear it for jumping jacks and somersaults! Exercise and getting active is a terrific way to activate the brain…
CONTINUEDSetting Boundaries for Summer
Aaahhh, Summer. The school year comes to a close, and parents start to dream about the days when schedules are…
CONTINUED7 Questions to Find the Right Camp for ADHD Kids
It’s hard to believe official summer is around the corner, but thankfully Matt Weneta takes the stress out of finding…
CONTINUEDHow to Pick Your Battles to Achieve Family Peace
How Positivity Helps You ‘Pick Your Battles’ Positive parenting. Focus on their strengths, on their successes. Downplay and redirect those…
CONTINUEDCoping With ADHD
Katherine Ellison’s Secret Trick Like millions of literally millions of other parents around the world, I cope with ADHD as…
CONTINUED(continued) more than a ‘deficit of attention.’ Instead, ADHD can appear as a rather complicated collection of symptoms, manifesting somewhat differently for each individual. It may more easily be understood as a brain-based developmental delay in executive function. It can also be confused with or compounded by the many co-existing conditions that are common for people with ADHD, including anxiety, learning disabilities, depression, asthma, allergies, autism, Tourette syndrome, as well as newer (and less-well-known or researched) conditions, such as rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD).
Executive functions are responsible for how we think, feel, and act. They’re how we get ourselves to do (or not do) absolutely anything. Therefore, the symptoms that lead to an ADHD diagnosis are not just whether or not someone can pay attention, but whether they can self-regulate – whether they can decide what to pay attention to, stick with it, finish what they’re focusing on, minimize their impulses, and avoid getting distracted in the process. That’s what makes parenting so difficult.
The five areas most commonly reflected in ADHD symptoms rely heavily on executive function: attention (focus), impulsivity, organization, emotional intensity, and (sometimes) hyperactivity. Again, when kids, teens or young adults struggle with these issues, it can cause significant challenges in parenting.
Whether parents are trying to get life moving in the mornings or just help their kids and teens manage any or all of their responsibilities, ADHD is best treated by a combination of medication and ‘behavior therapy,’ otherwise known as parent management training, or behavior management training. With training, parenting can work with medication (when relevant) to teach children and teens skills in self-management, and ultimately improve outcomes for the whole family.