Dr G's ADHD Chat

As an ADHD parent, you probably didn’t notice problems when your ADHDer was preschool. If you’re like my situation with my ADHD son, we didn’t really have increased difficulties until he started school. School is a system that was designed to train people to work in factories and the basics of that education system haven’t really changed in over a hundred years. This is not a system designed for an ADHD brain. It requires sitting still for hours, being obedient and not asking too many questions. It also doesn’t want the student to follow his or her own interests. Your ADHDer has also not fully developed a personality and self-concept so being disciplined in school when nobody else is getting disciplined starts him or her off developing a negative self-concept, thinking what’s wrong with me? Why am I always in trouble? I’ll be covering this with an emphasis on helping your child develop a positive mindset in spite of our education system.

Parenting an ADHD children is tough , at best. It’s even worse if you’re getting ADHD behaviors and you don’t know what’s going on. In this episode, I’ll be covering some of the early signs that help identify ADHD. The earlier you identify, the earlier to ban start treatment and train yourself to parent an ADHD child. It is just not the same as parenting a neurotypical child, but its a lot easier if you know what’s going one and what strategies work best.

Much of ADHD behavior looks like something other than what it really is. What looks rebellious is more likely to be overwhelm. What looks like hostility is more likely frustration. What looks like carelessness is more likely weak working memory. ADHD is a neurologic condition. This means nothing about it is willful or deviance or under voluntary control. As an ADHD parent or, indeed, as an individual with ADHD you have to accept this reality and adapt your expectations appropriately. No amount of yelling or “discipline” is going to change these behaviors. It’s up to you to adapt to this reality. I’ll cover some of the strategies for dealing with these situations appropriately.

Many parents of ADHD have told me that the thing they’re most concerned about is the “temper tantrums” their child has. It’s so fierce and unexpected and out of control that they’re afraid it could signal something worse than ADHD like bipolar disorder or maybe even Schizophrenia. I remember when my my own child threw these incredible temper tantrums, way worse than anything his older brother did. I be discussing the real cause of these episodes and how to better handle them. They are called RSD-Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and they’re the result of feeling overwhelmed. They’re not even angry. The adaptive abilities have been challenged too many times. Your job as a parent is too help them learn to recover. We’ll talk more.

The most important thing you can teach your ADHD child is resilience. Many of us start off trying to improve obedience and compliance and even increasing will power. There several things we, as parents, need to recognize. !. Our child’s brain is different. Not broken or damaged but different. 2. Will power is not the issue. 3. Neither is disobedience. 4. Confronting and challenging a child in the midst of an RSD temper tantrum will not be productive for either one of you. Your first job is to encourage and train resilience, basically how to recover after a mistake, bad plan or bad decision. Your child is having to perform in an environment that is not designed for the way his brain operates. Therefore he/she will make more mistakes than a. Neurotypical child and needs to be taught how to learn from his/her mistakes and recover. This is called resi;wince and I’ll be covering more about this vital topic for bothe parents and adults with ADHD.

Raising an ADHD child is very demanding and takes a lot of time and attention. Family systems are likely to get out of balance when one child gets more of parent’s time and attention than the other children. As the parents you have to figure some way do balance the time and attention that each child receives. I’ll be covering how parents can balance their time and attention across all their children and keep sibling resentment from getting out of hand.

Raisiong an ADHD child is very tricky and there are lots of ways to mess up. The central core issue that you must never screw up is Trust. Your ADHD child must believe that he/ she must be able to come to you with any problem and get a reasonable attempt from you to help. Your child must believe that your response will not make him/her feel worse than he/she already does. You must keep in mind that your ADHDer is having a tough time fitting in because all the system with which an ADHDer must deal were designed for a brain that is different from his/hers. This requires first that you keep your calm and second that you know and understand ADHD and third you understand that most of the behaviors that look like willful disobediance are done out of feelings of inadequacy, pain and guilt. I’ll cover this area and add some examples from my own sometimes inadequate responses.

We all know the schools are not designed for ADHD brains. They are designed for neurotypical brains. ADHD brains work on interest-based learning. If it catches their interest they learn well. Neurotypicals have importance based learning styles, Thant is, if they-re told its important they will try to learn it. The good news is that here are some ways to make learning more interesting and doable for your ADHDer. I’m going to cover the four basic concepts that work the best-Urgwncy,Novelty, Interest and Challenge. Using these concepts you can make learning easier for your ADHDer.

ADHD children are allowed under the Americans with Disabilities Act to get Accommodations to make the educational environment more fair for them and their ADHD brains. We all know that the school system in the United States was designed for neurotypical brains, not neurodivergent brains like our ADHDers have. The 504 system is designed to make the environment more fair, to “level the playing field.” I’ll be explaining some of the basics of this system and how parents should prepare for the Child Study Meeting and how to update the plan over your child’s academic career.

This is the second episode outlining specific strategies to improve academic performance by your ADHD child or, if you’re a an adult with ADHD, these tips apply to you. It’s important to remember that ADHD is more of a difference cognitively than a disability. ADHDers can learn as well as anybody else but it has to be in the right environment. ADHDers use an interest based system while neurotypicals use a Priority based system. I’ll discuss these differences and how you can optimize school to better match your ADHDers learning style.